Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and related sex differences in brain structure:An MRI study in dutch twins

Neuroimaging studies have indicated abnormalities in cortico-striato- thalamo-cortical circuits in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients, but results have not been consistent. Since there are significant sex differences in human brain anatomy and obsessive-compulsive symptomatology and its developmental trajectories tend to be distinct in males and females, we investigated whether sex is a potential source of heterogeneity in neuroimaging studies on obsessive-compulsive symptoms. We selected male and female twin pairs who were concordant for scoring either high or low for obsessive-compulsive... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Den Braber, Anouk
De Geus, Eco J.C.
Boomsma, Dorret I.
Van 't Ent, Dennis
Dokumenttyp: Artikel
Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
Reihe/Periodikum: Den Braber , A , De Geus , E J C , Boomsma , D I & Van 't Ent , D 2013 , ' Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and related sex differences in brain structure : An MRI study in dutch twins ' , Twin Research and Human Genetics , vol. 16 , no. 2 , pp. 516-524 . https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2013.10
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27077051
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
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Link(s) : https://research.vumc.nl/en/publications/a478d494-6ebe-4cb6-807f-cb00dda1c44f

Neuroimaging studies have indicated abnormalities in cortico-striato- thalamo-cortical circuits in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients, but results have not been consistent. Since there are significant sex differences in human brain anatomy and obsessive-compulsive symptomatology and its developmental trajectories tend to be distinct in males and females, we investigated whether sex is a potential source of heterogeneity in neuroimaging studies on obsessive-compulsive symptoms. We selected male and female twin pairs who were concordant for scoring either high or low for obsessive-compulsive symptoms and a group of discordant pairs where one twin scored high and the co-twin scored low. The design included 24 opposite-sex twin pairs. Magnetic resonance imaging scans of 31 males scoring high for obsessive-compulsive symptoms, 41 low-scoring males, 58 high-scoring females, and 73 low-scoring females were analyzed and the interaction of obsessive-compulsive symptoms by sex on gray matter volume was assessed using voxel-based morphometry. An obsessive-compulsive symptom by sex interaction was observed for the left middle temporal gyrus, the right middle temporal gyrus, and the right precuneus. These interactions acted to reduce or hide a main effect in our study and illustrate the importance of taking sex into account when investigating the neurobiology of obsessive-compulsive symptoms.