Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 58, Issue 3, 1 August 2005, Pages 226-232
Biological Psychiatry

Original article
Striatal Volume on Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Repetitive Behaviors in Autism

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.03.040Get rights and content

Background

The repetitive behaviors seen in autism phenotypically resemble those seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS), disorders in which structural and functional abnormalities of the basal ganglia (BG) are present and correspond to the severity of repetitive behaviors.

Methods

Seventeen subjects with autism by DSM-IV and Autism Diagnostic Interview (ADI) and 17 matched controls completed a 1.5 T magnetic resonance image (MRI) of the brain. Two blinded researchers, with good inter-rater reliability, outlined the right and left caudate and putamen. Autistic and control BG volumes covaried for total brain volume were compared using analysis of covariance. BG volumes within the autistic group were correlated with the ADI Repetitive Behavior scores (ADI-C domain).

Results

Right caudate volume controlled for total brain volume was significantly larger in autistic subjects than in controls. In addition, right caudate and total putamen volumes correlated positively with repetitive behavior scores on the ADI-C domain, particularly the higher order OCD-like repetitive behaviors.

Conclusions

Increased right caudate volume in autism is of interest, since this has also been observed in OCD patients. Increased volume of the right caudate and total putamen positively correlated with greater repetitive behaviors, supporting the hypothesis of BG dysfunction associated with repetitive behaviors in autistic adults.

Section snippets

Subjects

Subjects included 17 outpatients diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (9 with autistic disorder, 7 with Asperger’s syndrome, and 1 with Pervasive Development Disorder-Not otherwise specified [PDD-NOS]) and 17 healthy controls. Each group consisted of 15 men and 2 women well matched for age.

Subjects were recruited by advertisement to the Seaver and New York Autism Center of Excellence at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants after

Results

There were no significant differences between the two groups in terms of IQ and age (Table 1). The mean ADI scores for the autism group are reported in Table 2.

The right caudate volume, after statistical control for total brain volume, was significantly larger in the autistic group than in the control group (F = 4.798, p = .036) (Table 3). This represented a 10% increase in right caudate volume in the autism vs. control subgroups, and a moderate (d = .59) standardized effect size. These results

Discussion

The results of this study suggest the presence of striatal abnormalities in adults with autism. The increased right caudate volume may be of particular interest because of a prior study reporting large right caudate volumes in adults with OCD (Scarone et al 1992). This would suggest possible common pathways and abnormalities associated with repetitive behaviors in OCD and our group of autistic individuals. In addition, it seems that there was a diagnostic condition by hemisphere interaction for

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