Morphological alteration of parahippocampal gyrus on patient with schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a chronic disease that is characterized with impairment of reality perception, hallucination and delirium.Recently, in neuroimaging studies, some abnormalities that may be related to the signs and symptoms of the disease have been shown.Parahippocampal gyrus (PHG) is one of the brain structures that is investigated recently. In our this thesis investigation, morphological variation of PHG were investiagted by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).The study comprised 22 schizophrenia patients who had applied to Firat University Hospital Department of Psychiatry as out- or in- patients and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia according to the criteria of DSM-IV and 28 healthy controls. The patients were administered the sociodemographical data form, positive and negative syndrome scale and SCID. The volumetric measurement of total brain, gray matter, white matter, parahippocampal gyrus was performed on patients and control group by using MRI.Parahippocampal gyrus volumes were statistically significantly reduced compared to those of healthy controls.This can be considered PHG has an important relationship with both pathophysiology and clinical course of the disease. We suggest that the investigations which use together the visualisation technique that examine the functional qualifications of this area and the tests research the cognitive functions, make us to provide to reach more important and effective results.