Did anybody have an mri done to see if the sz shows up? Was thinking of getting one done to confirm my sz, 1515155
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I had a contrast MRI done recently, but it wasn’t for schizophrenia, it was for a suspected cerebrospinal fluid leak. No report yet.
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I’ve had four MRI’s done in the past year. They were all for paid research studies. Nothing showed up.
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I had an MRI because I was stressing out that I had a brain tumor. My first meeting with the doc she said there probably isn’t anything wrong with me, but she had me do MRI just to be sure. A couple weeks later the doc showed me the photos of my brain and everything looked good. Although I had something wrong with my sinuses and she could tell from the image that was the cause of my headaches. If you need to do it to keep from worrying about it you should probably do it and move on.
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I wasn’t aware that an MRI could show schizophrenia
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I’d love to but I am on medicaid and they will never approve it. When I first had it they had CAT scans and the doctor didn’t want to bother with any including the one I had about 8 years before which indicated I was “normal”.
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I’ve had MRIs before.
The first one at age 14 showed disc herniation in my spine (with degenerative disc disease).
The second one at age 20 showed that the disc herniation has returned, and degenerative disc disease is still persistent.
I had MRI because the doctor was suspicious that the pain I had was due to a disc herniation, and he was correct. I had severe disc herniation with adolescent-onset degenerative disc disease (which is rare). But my pdoc didn’t want to have an MRI but instead measured my brain waves when I started to have symptoms.
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Were they studies related to sz?
It shows the parts of the brain which light up during auditory hallucinations
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I had an mri in a hospital in April 2013. I was diagnosed with chronic undifferentiated schizophrenia
But that might have been cuz I vehemently denied any mood issues for myself (usually got schizoaffective)
Not sure what the tests determine but yeah.
Can I call up the hospital for records on my mri if I wanted??
Yep they were all sz related. It was fun hanging out with the research assistants that were all people around my age. I made enough money that I paid taxes last year. If you have free time and are near a major city I recommend doing it.
You’re thinking of an fMRI. A regular MRI only shows the structure of the brain. I recently had one done and it showed greater than average loss of gray matter for my age. Which is consistent with schizophrenia, but not definitive proof.
It’s pretty much impossible to get an fMRI unless you’re part of a research study that uses fMRI data. They don’t have any diagnostic value according to insurance companies. But if you haven’t had an MRI or CT scan before, it might be a good idea to get one, just to check for physical causes for your hallucinations. Brain tumors happen.
A doctor can evaluate you beforehand to see if you have signs of a brain tumor. Signs include uneven facial expressions, numbness/tingling/weakness in parts of the body, migraines, fainting spells, one eye pointing up and one pointing down, and uneven dilation of the pupils. If you don’t have any of these signs, you probably won’t qualify for an MRI, since they’re very expensive. I had pretty much all of them as a kid, so I got mine as soon as I was evaluated. Now, I get them about once every five years to make sure nothing’s grown back.
I don’t think it can 
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No, it can’t. At least, we can’t yet interpret the data in any meaningful way to definitively diagnose schizophrenia from an MRI or fMRI. But it can show loss of gray matter, which is commonly correlated with living with psychosis. It can also show other structural abnormalities that could be contributing to symptoms, though this is very rare.
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