Anterior hippocampal grey matter predicts mental health outcome in functional neurological disorders: an exploratory pilot study

David L Perez, Benjamin Williams, Nassim Matin, Julie Mello, Bradford C Dickerson, W Curt LaFrance Jr, Matcheri S Keshavan, David L Perez, Benjamin Williams, Nassim Matin, Julie Mello, Bradford C Dickerson, W Curt LaFrance Jr, Matcheri S Keshavan

No abstract available

Keywords: conversion disorder; functional movement disorders; hippocampus; psychogenic nonepileptic seizures; voxel-based morphometry.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: None declared.

Figures

FIG. 1. Baseline Anterior Hippocampal Grey Matter Volume Predicts Mental Health Outcome in Functional Neurological Disorders

(A) In within-group voxel-based morphometry analyses, improvements in mental health outcome positively correlated with individual-differences in left anterior hippocampal grey matter volumes (z-score=3.76; psvc=0.027). (B) In secondary between-group analyses, patients with functional neurological disorders (FND) reporting the least improvement in their mental health at 6-month follow-up (N=11) exhibited decreased baseline right anterior hippocampal grey matter volume compared to 27 healthy controls (z-score=−3.97; psvc=0.011). As also displayed, subthreshold group-effects were appreciated in the left anterior hippocampus (puncorrected<0.001). Images are thresholded at an uncorrected p-value of 0.005. To display in the scatter plots a measure of grey matter volumes for visualization purposes only, the MarsBar toolbox (http://marsbar.sourceforge.net/) was used to extract mean grey matter volumes for each subject at a 5mm sphere centered at the peak voxel of statistically significant findings. R indicates right; L, left; SF-36, Short Form Health Survey-36.