MRI reveal differences in brain regions of children with Tourette syndrome

The largest study of brain structure ever reported in children with Tourette syndrome (TS) found that children with the neuropsychiatric disorder appear to have a lower white matter volume in their brain compared to those without it.

The study was published in Molecular Psychiatry by researchers from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who performed a multicenter collaborative approach to this disease. The authors used MRI to examine different regions of the brain of children with and without TS, testing gray matter and white matter volume differences.

Researchers matched 103 children between the ages of 7 to 17 one-to-one with children who did not have tics for age, sex and handedness.

From the findings, researchers found less white matter around the orbital medial prefrontal cortex in kids with the disease, than those without it.

Greater gray matter was found in the posterior thalamus and hypothalamus, in children without TS, compared to those with it.

Researchers believe that these findings will help to clarify future structural imaging studies on what age the regional differences in gray matter and white matter volume in Tourette syndrome first develop and if it continues through adulthood.

However, it is still not clear if the results of increased gray matter volume in posterior thalamus depict increased neuronal cell number, glial cell number, neuropil or increased water content.

“On the other hand, this reflects a potential strength of the present study: an unbiased, whole-brain analysis identified regions of brain that have hardly been studied at a cellular level in TS,” wrote the authors.