Morphological Profiling of Schizophrenia: Cluster Analysis of MRI-Based Cortical Thickness Data
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The diagnosis of schizophrenia is thought to embrace several distinct subgroups. The manifold entities in a single clinical patient group increase the variance of biological measures, deflate the group-level estimates of causal factors, and mask the presence of treatment effects. However, reliable neurobiological boundaries to differentiate these subgroups remain elusive. Since cortical thinning is a well-established feature in schizophrenia, we investigated if individuals (patients and healthy controls) with similar patterns of regional cortical thickness form naturally occurring morphological subtypes. K-means algorithm clustering was applied to regional cortical thickness values obtained from 256 structural MRI scans (179 patients with schizophrenia and 77 healthy controls [HCs]). GAP statistics revealed three clusters with distinct regional thickness patterns. The specific patterns of cortical thinning, clinical characteristics, and cognitive function of each clustered subgroup were assessed. The three clusters based on thickness patterns comprised of a morphologically impoverished subgroup (25% patients, 1% HCs), an intermediate subgroup (47% patients, 46% HCs), and an intact subgroup (28% patients, 53% HCs). The differences of clinical features among three clusters pertained to age-of-onset, N-back performance, duration exposure to treatment, total burden of positive symptoms, and severity of delusions. Particularly, the morphologically impoverished group had deficits in N-back performance and less severe positive symptom burden. The data-driven neuroimaging approach illustrates the occurrence of morphologically separable subgroups in schizophrenia, with distinct clinical characteristics. We infer that the anatomical heterogeneity of schizophrenia arises from both pathological deviance and physiological variance. We advocate using MRI-guided stratification for clinical trials as well as case-control investigations in schizophrenia.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".