Chronic auditory hallucinations in schizophrenic patients: MR analysis of the coincidence between functional and morphologic abnormalities.

Purpose: To prospectively evaluate if functional magnetic resonance (MR) imaging abnormalities associated with auditory emotional stimuli coexist with focal brain reductions in schizophrenic patients with chronic auditory hallucinations. Materials and Methods: Institutional review board approval was obtained and all participants gave written informed consent. Twenty-one right-handed male patients with schizophrenia and persistent hallucinations (started to hear hallucinations at a mean age of 23 years ± 10, with 15 years ± 8 of mean illness duration) and 10 healthy paired participants (same ethnic group [white], age, and education level [secondary school]) were studied. Functional echo-planar T2*-weighted (after both emotional and neutral auditory stimulation) and morphometric three-dimensional gradient-recalled echo T1-weighted MR images were analyzed using Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM2) software. Brain activation images were extracted by subtracting those with emotional from nonemotional words. A...