ABSTRACT
Objective To explore the gray matter changes in aggressive patients with schizophrenia,and the relationship between the gray matter and aggression in patients.Methods Eighteen aggressive patients with schizophrenia (SZ1),18 age-and gender-matched un-aggressive patients with schizophrenia (SZ2) and 18 normal controls (NC) were enrolled in the study.Then a 3.0 T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan was conducted for each participant.The voxel-based morphometry (VBM) approach and the Chinese version of Buss & Perry aggression questionnaire (B&P) were used to explore imaging data and to assess the aggression,respectively.Results Compared with NC,patients with schizophrenia showed changes in gray matter volume (GMV) in the frontal,temporal and the occipital lobes (P＜0.05,AlphaSim corrected).Compared with SZ2,SZ1 showed increased GMV in the right supramarginal gyrus,right postcentral gyms,bilateral insula and orbito-frontal gyri (P＜0.05,AlphaSim corrected).The GMV of the right insula,right postcentral gyms and right supramarginal grus were positively associated with B&P scores in patients with schizophrenia (P＜0.01,AlphaSim corrected),respectively.Conclusions These preliminary findings support that the aggression in schizophrenia is associated with GMV changes of brain regions in patients with schizophrenia.The right postcentral gyrus,the right insula and the right supramarginal gyrus may be involved in the neural mechanism of aggression in schizophrenia.