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Interhemispheric communication in schizophrenia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2011

Marcella Bellani ,
Carlo Alberto Marzi  and
Paolo Brambilla
Marcella Bellani*
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine and Public Health, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Verona (Italy) Inter-University Centre of Behavioural Neurosciences (ICBN), University of Verona, Verona and University of Udine, Udine (Italy)
Carlo Alberto Marzi
Affiliation:
Department of Neurological and Visual Sciences, University of Verona and National Institute of Neuroscience, Verona (Italy)
Paolo Brambilla
Affiliation:
Inter-University Centre of Behavioural Neurosciences (ICBN), University of Verona, Verona and University of Udine, Udine (Italy) Section of Psychiatry, Department of Pathology and Experimental & Clinical Medicine, University of Udine, Udine (Italy) Scientific Institute ‘E. Medea’, Udine (Italy) CERT-BD, Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina, (USA)
*
Address for correspondence Dr. M. Bellani, Department of Medicine and Public Health, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Piazzale L.A. Scuro 10, 37134 Verona (Italy) Fax: +39-045-8027498 E-mail:marcella.bellani@univr.it
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Extract

The corpus callosum (CC) is the brain's largest white matter tract, mostly composed by both myelinated and unmyelinated fibres, connecting the two cerebral hemispheres. The CC can be divided into different sections: rostrum, genu, body, isthmus and splenium (Aboitiz et al., 1992). Myelinated fibres predominate in the midbody and the splenium while unmyelinated fibres are more numerous in the rostrum and the genu. The callosal fiber disposition approximately reflects brain topography: the anterior sections connect the frontal lobes, the median sections connect temporal and parietal regions, and the posterior sections link occipital areas (Pandya et al., 1971). This traditional picture, however, which has been obtained mainly through studies in non-human primates has been partly modified by modern diffusion tensor imaging studies in humans (Hofer & Frahm, 2006). The CC matures after birth through adolescence and into early adulthood and is involved in different cognitive processes such as sensory-motor integration, attention, language, arousal and memory. Its size has been shown to be associated with handedness, sex (i.e., greater splenium in females and greater genu in males, Dubb et al., 2003) and cerebral laterality (i.e., inverse correlation between callosal connectivity and brain lateralization in males; Luders et al., 2003), and age (Ota et al., 2006) Specifically, age-related callosal degeneration has been detected by a diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study (Ota et al., 2006) in the sub-regions that connect areas which are thought to be vulnerable to normal aging: the genu, rostral body, and isthmus. This result replicated post mortem findings of callosal degeneration in rostral body, anterior midbody and isthmus (Aboitiz et al., 1996).

Keywords

corpus callosuminterhemispheric communicationschizophrenia
Type
Neurobiology of Psychosis. Clinical and Psychosocial Implications
Information
Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 19 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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