Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 55, Issue 3, 1 February 2004, Pages 323-326
Biological Psychiatry

Brief Report
White matter structure in autism: preliminary evidence from diffusion tensor imaging

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2003.10.022Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

Individuals with autism have severe difficulties in social communication and relationships. Prior studies have suggested that abnormal connections between brain regions important for social cognition may contribute to the social deficits seen in autism.

Methods

In this study, we used diffusion tensor imaging to investigate white matter structure in seven male children and adolescents with autism and nine age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control subjects.

Results

Reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) values were observed in white matter adjacent to the ventromedial prefrontal cortices and in the anterior cingulate gyri as well as in the temporoparietal junctions. Additional clusters of reduced FA values were seen adjacent to the superior temporal sulcus bilaterally, in the temporal lobes approaching the amygdala bilaterally, in occipitotemporal tracts, and in the corpus callosum.

Conclusions

Disruption of white matter tracts between regions implicated in social functioning may contribute to impaired social cognition in autism.

Section snippets

Methods and materials

Subjects were 16 male children and adolescents, 7 diagnosed with high-functioning autism and 9 typically developing control subjects (Table 1). The diagnosis of autism was based on DSM-IV criteria (American Psychiatric Association 1994), the Autism Diagnostic Inventory—Revised (Rutter et al 1995), and the Autism Diagnostic Observational Schedule, Generic (Lord et al 1999). In addition, a history of delayed phrase speech development (i.e., after 36 months) was an inclusion criterion for the

Results

As shown in Table 1, there were no significant differences in full-scale IQ between the two groups; however, subjects with autism had a significantly lower verbal IQ score, as expected. In this sample, the performance IQ was significantly higher in subjects with autism compared with control subjects.

Subjects with autism showed significantly reduced FA values in, and adjacent to, the anterior cingulate bilaterally, extending into the body and genu of the corpus callosum, the ventromedial

Discussion

Our preliminary results suggest that white matter structure is disrupted in subjects with autism. Specifically, reduced FA values were seen adjacent to brain regions that have been implicated in social cognition. Among these are regions important for face and gaze processing (fusiform gyrus and the superior temporal sulcus; Kanwisher et al., 1997, Puce et al., 1995, Puce et al., 1998) and for awareness of mental states and emotional processing (anterior cingulate, amygdala, ventromedial

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this manuscript was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant Nos. MH01142, HD31715, MH064708, and HD40761, and the Sinclair Fund. We thank Christopher Dant and Amy Garrett for their help in manuscript preparation.

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