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Adolescents with childhood-onset schizophrenia show markedly progressive decreases in gray matter in parietal-frontal brain regions on MRI (JW Psychiatry Oct 18 2001). However, this finding produces an unsupportable conclusion, as it implies that such progressive decreases in certain regional brain areas would lead to smaller brain volumes in autopsy studies than have been observed. To further address changes in brain size, researchers examined brain surface contractions by using relatively new analytic techniques.
Two MRIs were conducted 2 years apart in 16 patients with schizophrenia (aged 17–28 at first scan) and in 14 age-matched healthy controls. The assessment methods (cortical pattern matching and structural image evaluation, with nor…