Voxel Based Morphometry In Patients With Psychotic Versus Non Psychotic Depression

Depression is a major psychiatric disorder and a leading cause of disability worldwide. The clinical representation encompasses affective, cognitive and somatic complains such as low mood, anxiety, lack of pleasure and interest, disturbances of sleep and appetite, decreased self-esteem, thoughts of guilt, hopelessness, and even suicide.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) with psychotic features (psychotic depression) is a severe disorder with a lifetime prevalence of 0.35-1% .

Over the last decades, increasing evidence from post-mortem studies and in vivo studies emerged that mood disorder can induce structural and morphometric changes of the brain The development of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has allowed for more advanced structural imaging

Several structural magnetic resonance imaging (s MRI) studies have identified key brain areas involved in MDD. In particular, voxel-based morphometry (VBM), it is helpful in quantitatively identifying unexpected anatomic changes studies have found that MDD is associated with widespread local brain abnormalities, mainly affecting the frontal gyrus, insula, temporal lobes and anterior cingulate gyrus . Structural white matter alterations have also been reported within the inferior parietal lobule and frontal gyrus .

Many studies are positive about grey matter (GM) volume reductions in various cortical regions in depressed patients compared to healthy controls . The most consistent findings appear to be related to GM loss in medial frontal cortex (MFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) with less evidence about subcortical structures such as the amygdala and the hippocampus .