From a Twitter post by Sidhant Chopra:
New preprint differentiating antipsychotic med vs. illness effects on cortical thickness in people w/ psychosis.
People receiving placebo show prominent cortical thinning over 1st year of illness, whereas those receiving antipsychotics do not.
The preprint:
Differential effects of illness and antipsychotics on cortical thinning in first episode psychosis - Chopra et al., 2025
We also touch on potential neural substrates of illness-related thinning in psychosis, and find alignment with normative levels of specific receptor systems, while certain highly differentiated and early maturing sensory/koniocortical areas appeared relatively protected.
These findings are consistent with our prior work in this cohort where we found that antipsychotics may preserve brain volume in basal ganglia (at least during the early stages of illness)