A Look at Brain Anatomy and Autism
A Look at Brain Anatomy and Autism
This is the Medscape Neurology Minute. I am Dr. Alan Jacobs. The differences in brain anatomy in adults with autism spectrum disorder and how these relate to behavioral variation is poorly understood. Now, researchers from the Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, England, have published a multicenter case-control study to identify brain regions and systems associated with autism spectrum disorder in adults using quantitative MRI. They enrolled a well-characterized group of 89 men with autism and 89 men as control participants who did not differ significantly in mean age or full-scale IQ. The main outcome measures included between-group differences in mean regional neuroanatomy assessed by voxel-based morphometry, and distributed neural systems maximally correlated with autism spectrum disorder as identified by partial least-squares analysis. Adults with autism did not differ significantly from the control participants in overall brain volume. However, voxel-based comparisons between groups revealed that individuals with autism had significantly increased gray matter volume in the anterior temporal dorsolateral prefrontal regions and significant reductions in the occipital and medial parietal regions, compared with controls.
Of importance, these regional differences in neuroanatomy were significantly correlated with the severity of specific autistic symptoms. Finally, the large-scale neuroanatomical networks maximally correlated with autism identified by partial least-squares analysis included the same brain regions identified by voxel-based analysis, and they observed spatially distributed reductions in white matter volume in participants with autism. The investigators concluded that adults with autism have distributed differences in brain anatomy and connectivity that are associated with specific autistic features and traits, such that can be characterized as a syndrome with atypical neural connectivity. This study was selected from Medscape's Practice-Changing Articles in Neurology. I'm Dr. Alan Jacobs.
Abstract
This is the Medscape Neurology Minute. I am Dr. Alan Jacobs. The differences in brain anatomy in adults with autism spectrum disorder and how these relate to behavioral variation is poorly understood. Now, researchers from the Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, England, have published a multicenter case-control study to identify brain regions and systems associated with autism spectrum disorder in adults using quantitative MRI. They enrolled a well-characterized group of 89 men with autism and 89 men as control participants who did not differ significantly in mean age or full-scale IQ. The main outcome measures included between-group differences in mean regional neuroanatomy assessed by voxel-based morphometry, and distributed neural systems maximally correlated with autism spectrum disorder as identified by partial least-squares analysis. Adults with autism did not differ significantly from the control participants in overall brain volume. However, voxel-based comparisons between groups revealed that individuals with autism had significantly increased gray matter volume in the anterior temporal dorsolateral prefrontal regions and significant reductions in the occipital and medial parietal regions, compared with controls.
Of importance, these regional differences in neuroanatomy were significantly correlated with the severity of specific autistic symptoms. Finally, the large-scale neuroanatomical networks maximally correlated with autism identified by partial least-squares analysis included the same brain regions identified by voxel-based analysis, and they observed spatially distributed reductions in white matter volume in participants with autism. The investigators concluded that adults with autism have distributed differences in brain anatomy and connectivity that are associated with specific autistic features and traits, such that can be characterized as a syndrome with atypical neural connectivity. This study was selected from Medscape's Practice-Changing Articles in Neurology. I'm Dr. Alan Jacobs.
Abstract