Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Building 149, 139th Street, 9th Floor, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA. rauch@psych.mgh.harvard.edu
Morphometric magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to compare regional brain volumes in eight women with body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and eight healthy comparison subjects. The BDD group exhibited a relative leftward shift in caudate asymmetry and greater total white matter vs. the comparison group. Findings with respect to the caudate nucleus are consistent with both the conceptualization of BDD as an obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder, and the 'striatal topography model' of obsessive-compulsive disorders. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd.