Cortical thickness and sulcal depth: insights on development and psychopathology in paediatric epilepsy

BACKGROUND The relationship between cortical thickness (CThick) and sulcal depth (SDepth) changes across brain regions during development. Epilepsy youth have CThick and SDepth abnormalities and prevalent psychiatric disorders. AIMS This study compared the CThick-SDepth relationship in children with focal epilepsy with typically developing children (TDC) and the role played by seizure and psychopathology variables. METHOD A surface-based, computational high-resolution three-dimesional (3D) magnetic resonance image analytic technique compared regional CThick-SDepth relationships in 42 participants with focal epilepsy and 46 TDC (6-16 years) imaged in a 1.5 Tesla scanner. Psychiatric interviews administered to each participant yielded psychiatric diagnoses. Parents provided seizure-related information. RESULTS The TDC group alone demonstrated a significant negative medial fronto-orbital CThick-SDepth correlation. Focal epilepsy participants with but not without psychiatric diagnoses showed significant positive pre-central and post-central CThick-SDepth associations not found in TDC. Although the history of prolonged seizures was significantly associated with the post-central CThick-SDepth correlation, it was unrelated to the presence/absence of psychiatric diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS Abnormal CThick-SDepth pre-central and post-central associations might be a psychopathology biomarker in paediatric focal epilepsy. DECLARATION INTEREST None. COPYRIGHT AND USAGE © 2015 The Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Non-Commercial, No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.