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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on October 26, 2005
Cerebral Cortex 2006 16(8):1225-1231; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhj063
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Structural Brain Correlates of Neurological Soft Signs in Healthy Individuals

Paola Dazzan1, Kevin D. Morgan1, Xavier Chitnis2, John Suckling3, Craig Morgan1, Paul Fearon1, Philip K. McGuire1, Peter B. Jones3, Julian Leff1 and Robin M. Murray1

1 King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Division of Psychological Medicine, London, UK, 2 King's College London, Institute of Psychiatry, Department of Neurology, London, UK and 3 Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, UK

Address correspondence to Paola Dazzan, Division of Psychological Medicine, Box 63, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, UK. Email: spcbpad{at}iop.kcl.ac.uk.

It has yet to be established whether neurological soft signs (NSS), which include poor motor coordination, sensory perceptual difficulties and difficulties in sequencing of complex motor tasks, result from specific or diffuse brain structural abnormalities. Studying the neuroanatomical basis of NSS in healthy individuals may help to identify which brain areas are specifically associated with these signs, while excluding the potential confounding effects of psychiatric and neurological disorders. We investigated the relationship between brain structure and NSS in 43 healthy individuals, using the Neurological Evaluation Scale for neurological assessment, and high resolution MRI and voxel-based methods of image analysis to investigate brain structure. Higher rates of NSS were associated with a reduction of inferior frontal gyrus, middle and superior temporal gyrus, and anterior cingulate gyrus. It is of note that in a previous study of patients with psychosis we found that an excess of NSS was associated with a reduction of similar cortical areas. Therefore, we suggest that these cortical brain structural changes represent a common neuroanatomical substrate of NSS, across healthy individuals and patients with psychosis.

Key Words: grey matter • MRI • neurological soft signs • psychosis • voxel-based morphometry


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