Figure 3

Age×group interaction: linear effects of age. Significant prefrontal ROIs extracted from examination of significant age×group interaction effect, in relation to ePNS group. ROIs (a and b) compare ePNS and entire non-PNS group, whereas (c) compares ePNS and sPNS subgroups. Plots of mean cortical thickness for each ROI comparing all three patient groups and controls depicted directly below each RFT-thresholded brain map. Omnibus statistics for ROIs are as follows: (a) F_(3,371)=9.09, P<0.001; (b) F_(3,371)=6.49, P<0.001; (c) F_(3,371)=5.26, P<0.001. Post hoc analyses revealed that the ePNS group had a significantly different regression slope from all other groups (controls, sPNS, and non-PNS without sPNS), with all P’s ⩽0.001. Annual rates of change after age 18 in Controls, sPNS, and Non-PNS groups amount to ~0.32% CT loss per year across the prefrontal ROIs. By contrast, ePNS patients showed an annual increase in CT of 0.37% per year. Blue color bar represents significant RFT-thresholded clusters with P-corrected=0.05 (no significant results at the vertex level). All statistics are projected on an average surface template generated from the analyzed sample. ePNS, early persistent negative symptoms; RFT, random field theory; sPNS, persistent negative symptoms due to secondary factors; ROI, region-of-interest.