CORTICAL SURFACE AREA & THICKNESS IN HEALTH AND DISEASE

我们建议探索唐氏综合征的神经生物学基础， 精神分裂症和双相情感障碍使用新的方法测量皮质 神经解剖学。我们将开发和验证测量表面积的方法， 皮质结构的厚度和厚度分布，并使用这些 方法四组受试者：健康人和唐氏综合症患者 综合症、精神分裂症和双相情感障碍。我们假设表面积 厚度测量将比传统体积提供更多的信息 措施，唐氏综合征患者将有全局皮质 赤字。我们认为，特定的皮质区域将在 精神分裂症(异交感皮质)和双相情感障碍(内嗅皮层)。 尽管我们在这里重点关注三种疾病，但我们相信，我们 对研究其他疾病的研究人员也是有用的。我们 计划使我们的软件(用Java语言编写，因此可以移植到 最流行的计算机，包括C、Mac和基于Unix的系统) 在实验室的网站上。

We propose to explore the neurobiological basis of Down syndrome, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorders using novel methods for measuring cortical neuroanatomy. We will develop and validate methods for measuring surface area, thickness, and thickness distribution of cortical structures, and use these methods in four subject groups: healthy individuals, and patients with Down syndrome, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. We hypothesize that surface area and thickness measures will be more informative that conventional volume measures, and that patients with Down syndrome will have global cortical deficits. We believe that specific cortical regions will be affected in schizophrenia (heteromodal cortex) and bipolar disorder (entorhinal cortex). Although we focus here on three diseases, we believe that the methods that we will develop would be useful to researchers studying other diseases too. We plan to make our soDware (written in the JAVA language and thus portable to most popular computers including C's, Mac's and Unix-based systems) available on the laboratory's web site.