Gray matter morphometry studies have lent seminal insights into the etiology of mental illness. Existing research has primarily focused on adults and then, typically on a single disorder. Examining brain characteristics in late childhood, when the brain is preparing to undergo significant adolescent reorganization and various forms of serious psychopathology are just first emerging, may allow for a unique and highly important perspective of overlapping and unique pathogenesis.

A total of 8645 youth were recruited as part of the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study. Magnetic resonance imaging scans were collected, and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), depressive, and anxiety symptoms were assessed three times over a 2-year period. Cortical thickness, surface area, and subcortical volume were used to predict baseline symptomatology and symptom progression over time.

Some features could possibly signal common vulnerability, predicting progression across forms of psychopathology (e.g. superior frontal and middle temporal regions). However, there was a specific predictive value for emerging PLEs (lateral occipital and precentral thickness), anxiety (parietal thickness/area and cingulate), and depression (e.g. parahippocampal and inferior temporal).

Findings indicate common and distinct patterns of vulnerability for varying forms of psychopathology are present during late childhood, before the adolescent reorganization, and have direct relevance for informing novel conceptual models along with early prevention and intervention efforts.

Progressive brain structural MRI changes are described in schizophrenia and have been ascribed to both illness progression and antipsychotic treatment. We investigated treatment effects, in terms of total cumulative antipsychotic dose, efficacy and tolerability, on brain structural changes over the first 24 months of treatment in schizophrenia.

A prospective, 24-month, single-site cohort study in 99 minimally treated patients with first-episode schizophrenia, schizophreniform and schizoaffective disorder, and 98 matched healthy controls. We treated the patients according to a fixed protocol with flupenthixol decanoate, a long-acting injectable antipsychotic. We assessed psychopathology, cognition, extrapyramidal symptoms and BMI, and acquired MRI scans at months 0, 12 and 24. We selected global cortical thickness, white matter volume and basal ganglia volume as the regions of interest.

The only significant group × time interaction was for basal ganglia volumes. However, patients, but not controls, displayed cortical thickness reductions and increases in white matter and basal ganglia volumes. Cortical thickness reductions were unrelated to treatment. White matter volume increases were associated with lower cumulative antipsychotic dose, greater improvements in psychopathology and cognition, and more extrapyramidal symptoms. Basal ganglia volume increases were associated with greater improvements in psychopathology, greater increases in BMI and more extrapyramidal symptoms.

We provide evidence for plasticity in white matter and basal ganglia associated with antipsychotic treatment in schizophrenia, most likely linked to the dopamine blocking actions of these agents. Cortical changes may be more closely related to the neurodevelopmental, non-dopaminergic aspects of the illness.

Exercise has been found to be important in maintaining neurocognitive health. However, the effect of exercise intensity level remains relatively underexplored. Thus, to test the hypothesis that self-paced high-intensity exercise and cardiorespiratory fitness (peak aerobic capacity; VO2peak) increase grey matter (GM) volume, we examined the effect of a 6-month exercise intervention on frontal lobe GM regions that support the executive functions in older adults.

Ninety-eight cognitively normal participants (age = 69.06 ± 5.2 years; n = 54 female) were randomised into either a self-paced high- or moderate-intensity cycle-based exercise intervention group, or a no-intervention control group. Participants underwent magnetic resonance imaging and fitness assessment pre-intervention, immediately post-intervention, and 12-months post-intervention.

The intervention was found to increase fitness in the exercise groups, as compared with the control group (F = 9.88, p = <0.001). Changes in pre-to-post-intervention fitness were associated with increased volume in the right frontal lobe (β = 0.29, p = 0.036, r = 0.27), right supplementary motor area (β = 0.30, p = 0.031, r = 0.29), and both right (β = 0.32, p = 0.034, r = 0.30) and left gyrus rectus (β = 0.30, p = 0.037, r = 0.29) for intervention, but not control participants. No differences in volume were observed across groups.

At an aggregate level, six months of self-paced high- or moderate-intensity exercise did not increase frontal GM volume. However, experimentally-induced changes in individual cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with frontal GM volume in our sample of older adults. These results provide evidence of individual variability in exercise-induced fitness on brain structure.

Survivors of patients with artery of Percheron infarction (API) often have a prolonged and disabling form of cognitive impairment that remains insufficiently characterized. We aimed to examine the clinical and cognitive features of API in the short and long term after stroke.

We reviewed 6400 patients with a first-ever stroke included in the Stroke Registry between 2011 and 2021. The diagnosis of API was based on clinical diagnosis and imaging confirmation. All patients underwent neuropsychological assessment at hospital stay and 1 year after stroke. A z-score of each patients’ cognitive test point was calculated, and a z-score inferior to 2 was considered as pathological.

Of the 10 patients enrolled, all had cognitive impairment, consciousness, and behavioral disorders at stroke onset. Six patients had pure bilateral thalamic involvement while four had bilateral thalamic and rostral midbrain involvement. At 12 months, 50% of patients had global mental state scores 2 SD below the population mean (z-score mean ± SD, −2.17 ± 0.4). Most of the prefrontal cortex cognitive processes including executive functions such as planning and cognitive control (z-score mean ± SD, −3.92 ± 0.3), processing speed (−4.42 ± 0.5), working memory (−3.97 ± 0.3) were severely impaired at stroke onset. Especially in patients with thalamic and rostral midbrain involvement, deficiencies in executive function (z-score mean ± SD, −2.60 ± 0.4), processing speed (−2.22 ± 0.5), working (−3.76 ± 0.4), and episodic memory (−2.23 ± 0.3) continued 12 months after stroke.

The occlusion of the artery of Percheron results in severe behavioral and cognitive disorders in the short and long term after stroke.

The aim of this systematic review was to synthesise and summarise evidence surrounding the clinical use of fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (FDG-PET/CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for target volume delineation (TVD) in rectal cancer radiotherapy planning.

PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane library, CINAHL, Web of Science and Scopus databases and other sources were systematically queried using keywords and relevant synonyms. Eligible full-text studies were assessed for methodological quality using the QUADAS-2 tool.

Eight of the 1448 studies identified met the inclusion criteria. Findings showed that MRI significantly delineate larger tumour volumes (TVs) than FDG-PET/CT while diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (DW-MRI) defined smaller gross tumour volumes (GTVs) compared to T2 weighted-Magnetic Resonance Image. CT-based GTVs were found to be larger compared to FDG-PET/CT. FDG-PET/CT also identified new lesions in 15–17% patients and TVs extending outside the routinely used clinical standard CT TV in 29–83% patients. Between observers, delineated volumes were similar and consistent between MRI sequences, whereas interobserver agreement was significantly improved with FDG-PET/CT than CT.

FDG-PET/CT and DW-MRI appear to delineate smaller rectal TVs and show improved interobserver variability. Overall, this study provides valuable insights into the amount of attention in the research literature that has been paid to imaging for TVD in rectal cancer.

Machine learning has increasingly been applied to classification of psychosis spectrum in neuroimaging research. However, a number of multimodal studies using MRI and electroencephalography (EEG) is quite limited.

To assess the power of multimodal structural MRI (sMRI) and EEG data to provide pairwise discrimination between first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients, individuals at ultra-high-risk of psychosis (UHR), and healthy controls (HC) using machine learning algorithms.

46 FES male patients, 39 UHR individuals, and 54 matched HC underwent sMRI (3T Philips scanner) and electroencephalography. T1-weighted images were processed via FreeSurfer to obtain cortical and subcortical measures. L2 regularized logistic regression was used to evaluate the efficacy of diagnostic prediction.

The accuracies of pairwise discriminations were: 87% for FES vs HC (specificity 83%, sensitivity 91%); 77% for FES vs UHR (specificity 76%, sensitivity 79%); 75% for UHR vs HC (specificity 77%, sensitivity 73%).

Current findings suggest that the patterns of anatomical and functional variability have potential as biomarkers for discrimination between schizophrenia, UHR, and healthy subjects. Furthermore, results show that the selection and multimodality of feature types are important. Specifically, adding EEG data to morphometric measures improved accuracy rates in FES vs HC and FES vs UHR contrasts, whereas standalone EEG data provided higher accuracy compared with morphometric or multimodal data in UHR vs HC discrimination. Expectedly, predictive power for the UHR was smaller than for the FES due to its intermediate anatomical features, located between those observed in healthy controls and those found in patients. The work was supported by RFBR grant 20-013-00748

Delineating the proximal urethra can be critical for radiotherapy planning but is challenging on computerised tomography (CT) imaging.

We trialed a novel non-invasive technique to allow visualisation of the proximal urethra using a rapid sequence magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) protocol to visualise the urinary flow in patients voiding during the simulation scan.

Of the seven patients enrolled, four were able to void during the MRI scan. For these four patients, direct visualisation of urinary flow through the proximal urethra was achieved. The average volume of the proximal urethra contoured on voiding MRI was significantly higher than the proximal urethra contoured on CT, 4·07 and 1·60 cc, respectively (p = 0·02). The proximal urethra location also differed; the Dice coefficient average was 0·28 (range 0–0·62).

In this small, proof-of-concept prospective clinical trial, the volume and location of the proximal urethra differed significantly when contoured on a voiding MRI scan compared to that determined by a conventional CT simulation. The shape of the proximal urethra on voiding MRI may be more anatomically correct compared to the proximal urethra shape determined with a semi-rigid catheter in place.

Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation is an important and effective treatment strategy for many malignancies, marrow failure syndromes, and immunodeficiencies in children, adolescents, and young adults. Despite advances in supportive care, patients undergoing transplant are at increased risk to develop cardiovascular co-morbidities.

This study was performed as a feasibility study of a rapid cardiac MRI protocol to substitute for echocardiography in the assessment of left ventricular size and function, pericardial effusion, and right ventricular hypertension.

A total of 13 patients were enrolled for the study (age 17.5 ± 7.7 years, 77% male, 77% white). Mean study time was 13.2 ± 5.6 minutes for MRI and 18.8 ± 5.7 minutes for echocardiogram (p = 0.064). Correlation between left ventricular ejection fraction by MRI and echocardiogram was good (ICC 0.76; 95% CI 0.47, 0.92). None of the patients had documented right ventricular hypertension. Patients were given a survey regarding their experiences, with the majority both perceiving that the echocardiogram took longer (7/13) and indicating they would prefer the MRI if given a choice (10/13).

A rapid cardiac MRI protocol was shown feasible to substitute for echocardiogram in the assessment of key factors prior to or in follow-up after haematopoietic stem cell transplantation.