Fig. 6: White matter microstructure in schizophrenia, major depressive disorder, and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.

a White matter microstructural abnormalities are shown, by tract, based on the largest-ever diffusion MRI studies of these three disorders. In schizophrenia (SCZ), fractional anisotropy, a measure of white matter microstructure, is lower in almost all individual regions, and in the full skeleton. In major depressive disorder (MDD), a weak pattern of effects is observed, again with MDD patients showing on average lower FA across the full white matter skeleton, when compared to controls. In comparisons between 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) and matched controls, by contrast, the average FA along the full white matter skeleton does not show systematic differences; instead, while some regions do show on average lower FA in affected individuals compared with controls, several white matter regions show higher FA. b Relative to appropriately matched groups of healthy controls (HC), group differences in fractional anisotropy are shown for ENIGMA’s studies of SCZ, MDD (both in adults), and 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. [Data adapted, with permission of the authors and publishers, from Kelly et al.⁵⁶, van Velzen et al.⁶⁷, and Villalón-Reina et al.¹⁷; a key to the tract names appears in the original papers; some tracts (i.e. the hippocampal portion of the cingulum) were omitted from the 22q11DS analysis as they were not consistently in the field of view for some cohorts of the working group].