No abstract

Neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that migraine is accompanied by spontaneous brain activity alterations in specific regions. However, these findings are inconsistent, thus hindering our understanding of the potential neuropathology. Hence, we performed a quantitative whole‐brain meta‐analysis of relevant resting‐state functional imaging studies to identify brain regions consistently involved in migraine. A systematic search of studies that investigated the differences in spontaneous brain activity patterns between migraineurs and healthy controls up to April 2022 was conducted. We then performed a whole‐brain voxel‐wise meta‐analysis using the anisotropic effect size version of seed‐based d mapping software. Complementary analyses including jackknife sensitivity analysis, heterogeneity test, publication bias test, subgroup analysis, and meta‐regression analysis were conducted as well. In total, 24 studies that reported 31 datasets were finally eligible for our meta‐analysis, including 748 patients and 690 controls. In contrast to healthy controls, migraineurs demonstrated consistent and robust decreased spontaneous brain activity in the angular gyrus, visual cortex, and cerebellum, while increased activity in the caudate, thalamus, pons, and prefrontal cortex. Results were robust and highly replicable in the following jackknife sensitivity analysis and subgroup analysis. Meta‐regression analyses revealed that a higher visual analog scale score in the patient sample was associated with increased spontaneous brain activity in the left thalamus. These findings provided not only a comprehensive overview of spontaneous brain activity patterns impairments, but also useful insights into the pathophysiology of dysfunction in migraine.

No abstract

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is an idiopathic psychiatric disorder with a heritable component and a substantial public health impact. Although abnormalities in total brain volumetric measures (TBVMs) have been found in patients with SCZ, it is still unknown whether these abnormalities have a causal effect on the risk of SCZ. Here, we performed a Mendelian randomization (MR) study to investigate the possible causal associations between each TBVM and SCZ risk. Specifically, genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics of total gray matter volume, total white matter volume, total cerebrospinal fluid volume, and total brain volume were obtained from the United Kingdom Biobank database (33,224 individuals), and SCZ GWAS summary statistics were provided by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (150,064 individuals). The main MR analysis was conducted using the inverse variance weighted method, and other MR methods, including MR-Egger, weighted median, simple mode, and weighted mode methods, were performed to assess the robustness of our findings. For pleiotropy analysis, we employed three approaches: MR-Egger intercept, MR-PRESSO, and heterogeneity tests. No TBVM was causally associated with SCZ risk according to the MR results, and no significant pleiotropy or heterogeneity was found for instrumental variables. Taken together, this study suggested that alterations in TBVMs were not causally associated with the risk of SCZ.