Watanabe, T., & Rees, G. (2016). Anatomical imbalance between cortical networks in autism. Scientific Reports, 6, 31114. http://doi.org/10.1038/srep31114.
Core symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) consist of socio-communicational deficits and repetitive, restricted behaviours. Although the neuroanatomy underlying these two symptoms has been studied, the biological mechanisms that allow these two seemingly irrelevant behavioural characteristics to coexist in a single developmental disorder remains unclear.
In this study using open anatomical neuroimaging data of high-functioning males with ASD and age-/sex-/IQ-matched controls, we found that atypical balance of grey matter volumes (GMV) between three large-scale cortical brain networks can be a key biological mechanism underlying such integration and segregation of these distinct symptoms of ASD.
We identified age-related atypical increases in relative GMVs of the regions constituting auditory and visual networks, and an age-associated aberrant decrease in relative GMV of fronto-parietal network (FPN) regions in ASD children. In addition, the atypically enlarged relative GMV of the auditory network in ASD adults was associated with the severity of their socio-communicational deficits, and that of visual network was correlated with cognitive inflexibility. Moreover, the atypical decrease in relative GMV of FPN was related to both of the two core symptoms.
These observations suggest that disproportionate undergrowth of FPN may be a common anatomical basis for the two dissociable and seemingly heterogeneous core symptoms of ASD, and relative overgrowth of the two different sensory networks may selectively underlie the different autistic symptoms.
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