Common Neurobiology Underlying Structural Properties of the Cerebral Cortex in Psychiatric Disorders

COEX 

Using virtual histology (PMID: 32857118) and virtual ontogeny (PMID: 35489875), we have been able to identify a number of commonalities in the neurobiological underpinnings of group differences between patients with different psychiatric disorders (and their respective controls) in the radial (thickness) and tangential (surface area) expansion of the cerebral cortex. Using these two approaches, we have been also able to explore common neurobiological mechanisms underlying variations in cortical thickness across the lifespan (PMID: 33311571), and those in surface area in carriers of copy number variations across the genome and in selected clinical syndromes (unpublished). In my contribution, I will use some of these findings to illustrate the power of relating – in space and time – phenotypes derived in vivo with magnetic resonance imaging to those obtained post mortem with transcriptomics.