2021/02/27 by Thomas Wolfers, Jaroslav Rokicki, Dag Alnæs +12
Medicine · Neuroscience · #Advanced MRI Techniques and Applications #Advanced Neuroimaging Techniques and Applications #Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1002/hbm.25386
openalex publication_date 2021/02/27 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
Identifying brain processes involved in the risk and development of mental disorders is a major aim. We recently reported substantial interindividual heterogeneity in brain structural aberrations among patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Estimating the normative range of voxel-based morphometry (VBM) data among healthy individuals using a Gaussian process regression (GPR) enables us to map individual deviations from the healthy range in unseen datasets. Here, we aim to replicate our previous results in two independent samples of patients with schizophrenia (n1 = 94; n2 = 105), bipolar disorder (n1 = 116; n2 = 61), and healthy individuals (n1 = 400; n2 = 312). In line with previous findings with exception of the cerebellum our results revealed robust group level differences between patients and healthy individuals, yet only a small proportion of patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder exhibited extreme negative deviations from normality in the same brain regions. These direct replications support that group level-differences in brain structure disguise considerable individual differences in brain aberrations, with important implications for the interpretation and generalization of group-level brain imaging findings to the individual with a mental disorder.