Browsing by Author "Castro, Mariana"
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Item Effects of socioeconomic status in cognition of people with schizophrenia: results from a Latin American collaboration network with 1175 subjects(2021) Sanguinetti, Letícia; Alliende, Luz Maria; Castañeda, Carmen Paz; Castro, Mariana; Guinjoan, Salvador; Massuda, Raffael; Berberian, Arthur; Fonseca, Ana; Gadelha, Ary; Bressan, Rodrigo; Crivelaro, Marisa; Louzã, Mario; Undurraga, Juan; González, Alfonso; Nacha, Rubén; Nieto, Rodrigo; Montes, Cristian; Silva, Hernán; Langer, Álvaro; Schmidt, Carlos; Mayol, Rocío; Díaz, Ana; Valencia, Johanna; López, Carlos; Solís, Rodolfo; Reyes, Francisco; De la Fuente, Camilo; Crossley, Nicolás; Gama, ClarissaBackground. Cognition heavily relies on social determinants and genetic background. Latin America comprises approximately 8% of the global population and faces unique challenges, many derived from specific demographic and socioeconomic variables, such as violence and inequality. While such factors have been described to influence mental health outcomes, no large-scale studies with Latin American population have been carried out. Therefore, we aim to describe the cognitive performance of a representative sample of Latin American individuals with schizophrenia and its relationship to clinical factors. Additionally, we aim to investigate how socioeconomic status (SES) relates to cognitive performance in patients and controls. Methods. We included 1175 participants from five Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico): 864 individuals with schizophrenia and 311 unaffected subjects. All participants were part of projects that included cognitive evaluation with MATRICS Consensus Cognitive Battery and clinical assessments. Results. Patients showed worse cognitive performance than controls across all domains. Age and diagnosis were independent predictors, indicating similar trajectories of cognitive aging for both patients and controls. The SES factors of education, parental education, and income were more related to cognition in patients than in controls. Cognition was also influenced by symptomatology. Conclusions. Patients did not show evidence of accelerated cognitive aging; however, they were most impacted by a lower SES suggestive of deprived environment than controls. These findings highlight the vulnerability of cognitive capacity in individuals with psychosis in face of demographic and socioeconomic factors in low- and middle-income countries.Publication Human development, inequality, and their associations with brain structure across 29 countries(2025) Medel, Vicente; Alliende, Luz M.; Bethlehem, Richard; Seidlitz, Jakob; Ringlein, Grace; Arango, Celso; Arnatkevičiūtė, Aurina; Asmal, Laila; Bellgrove, Mark; Benegal, Vivek; Bernardo, Miquel; Billeke, Pablo; Bosch-Bayard, Jorge; Bressan, Rodrigo; Busatto, Geraldo; Castro, Mariana; Chaim-Avancini, Tiffany; Costanzi, Monise; Czepielewski,Leticia; Dazzan, Paola; Fuente-Sandoval, Camilo de la; Diaz-Caneja, Covadonga M.; Forti, Marta Di; Diaz-Zuluaga, Ana Maria; Plessis, Stefan Du; Duran, Fabio; Fittipaldi, Sol; Fornito, Alex; Freimer, Nelson; Gadelha, Ary; Gama, Clarissa; Garani, Ranjini; Garcia-Rizo, Clemente; Gonzalez Campo, Cecilia; Gonzalez-Valderrama, Alfonso; Guinjoan, Salvador; Ivanovic, Daniza; Undurraga, Juan; Zamorano, FranciscoBackground The macro-social and environmental conditions in which people live, such as the level of a country’s development or inequality, are associated with brain-related disorders. However, the relationship between these systemic environmental factors and the brain remains unclear. We aimed to determine the association between the level of development and inequality of a country and the brain structure of healthy adults. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study pooling brain imaging (T1-based) data from 145 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in 7,962 healthy adults (4,110 women) in 29 different countries. We used a meta-regression approach to relate the brain structure to the country’s level of development and inequality. Results Higher human development was consistently associated with larger hippocampi and more expanded global cortical surface area, particularly in frontal areas. Increased inequality was most consistently associated with smaller hippocampal volume and thinner cortical thickness across the brain. Conclusions Our results suggest that the macro-economic conditions of a country are reflected in its inhabitants’ brains and may explain the different incidence of brain disorders across the world. The observed variability of brain structure in health across countries should be considered when developing tools in the field of personalized or precision medicine that are intended to be used across the world.Item Imaging Social and Environmental Factors as Modulators of Brain Dysfunction: Time to Focus on Developing Non-Western Societies(2019) Crossley, Nicolas A.; Alliende, Luz Maria; Ossandon, Tomas; Castañeda, Carmen Paz; González-Valderrama, Alfonso; Undurraga, Juan; Castro, Mariana; Guinjoan, Salvador; Díaz-Zuluaga, Ana M.; Pineda-Zapata, Julián A.; López-Jaramillo, Carlos; Reyes-Madrigal, Francisco; León-Ortíz, Pablo; Fuente-Sandoval, Camilo de la; Sanguinetti Czepielewski, Leticia; Gama, Clarissa S.; Zugman, Andre; Gadelha, Ary; Jackowski, Andrea; Bressa, RodrigoSocial and environmental factors are known risk factors and modulators of mental health disorders. We here conducted a nonsystematic review of the neuroimaging literature studying the effects of poverty, urbanicity, and community violence, highlighting the opportunities of studying non-Western developing societies such as those in Latin America. Social and environmental factors in these communities are widespread and have a large magnitude, as well as an unequal distribution, providing a good opportunity for their characterization. Studying the effect of poverty in these settings could help to explore the brain effect of economic improvements, disentangle the effect of absolute and relative poverty, and characterize the modulating impact of poverty on the underlying biology of mental health disorders. Exploring urbanicity effects in highly unequal cities could help identify the specific factors that modulate this effect as well as examine a possible dose–response effect by studying megacities. Studying brain changes in those living among violence, which is particularly high in places such as Latin America, could help to characterize the interplay between brain predisposition and exposure to violence. Furthermore, exploring the brain in an adverse environment should shed light on the mechanisms underlying resilience. We finally provide examples of two methodological approaches that could contribute to this field, namely a big cohort study in the developing world and a consortium-based meta-analytic approach, and argue about the potential translational value of this research on the development of effective social policies and successful personalized medicine in disadvantaged societies.Item Structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia in adverse environments: examining the effect of poverty and violence in six Latin American cities(2021) Crossley, Nicolas; Zugman, Andre; Reyes, Francisco; Czepielewski, Leticia; Castro, Mariana; Diaz, Ana; Pineda, Julian; Reckziegel, Ramiro; Gadelha, Ary; Jackowski, Andrea; Noto, Cristiano; Alliende, Luz; Iruretagoyena, Bárbara; Ossandon, Tomas; Ramírez, Juan; Castañeda, Carmen; González, Alfonso; Nachar, Ruben; León, Pablo; Undurraga, Juan; De la Fuente, Camilo; Bressan, Rodrigo; ANDES NetworkBackground: Social and environmental factors such as poverty or violence modulate the risk and course of schizophrenia. However, how they affect the brain in patients with psychosis remains unclear. Aims: We studied how environmental factors are related to brain structure in patients with schizophrenia and controls in Latin America, where these factors are large and unequally distributed. Method: This is a multicentre study of magnetic resonance imaging in patients with schizophrenia and controls from six Latin American cities. Total and voxel-level grey matter volumes, and their relationship with neighbourhood characteristics such as average income and homicide rates, were analysed with a general linear model. Results: A total of 334 patients with schizophrenia and 262 controls were included. Income was differentially related to total grey matter volume in both groups (P = 0.006). Controls showed a positive correlation between total grey matter volume and income (R = 0.14, P = 0.02). Surprisingly, this relationship was not present in patients with schizophrenia (R = -0.076, P = 0.17). Voxel-level analysis confirmed that this interaction was widespread across the cortex. After adjusting for global brain changes, income was positively related to prefrontal cortex volumes only in controls. Conversely, the hippocampus in patients with schizophrenia, but not in controls, was relatively larger in affluent environments. There was no significant correlation between environmental violence and brain structure. Conclusions: Our results highlight the interplay between environment, particularly poverty, and individual characteristics in psychosis. This is particularly important for harsh environments such as low- and middle-income countries, where potentially less brain vulnerability (less grey matter loss) is sufficient to become unwell in adverse (poor) environments.