Cortical morphological markers in children with autism: a structural magnetic resonance imaging study of thickness, area, volume, and gyrification

Abstract

BackgroundIndividuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been characterized by altered cerebral cortical structures; however, the field has yet to identify consistent markers and prior studies have included mostly adolescents and adults. While there are multiple cortical morphological measures, including cortical thickness, surface area, cortical volume, and cortical gyrification, few single studies have examined all these measures. The current study analyzed all of the four measures and focused on pre-adolescent children with ASD.MethodsWe employed the FreeSurfer pipeline to examine surface-based morphometry in 60 high-functioning boys with ASD (mean age = 8.35 years, range = 4–12 years) and 41 gender-, age-, and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) peers (mean age = 8.83 years), while testing for age-by-diagnosis interaction and between-group differences.ResultsDuring childhood and in specific regions, ASD participants exhibited a lack of normative age-related cortical thinning and volumetric reduction and an abnormal age-related increase in gyrification. Regarding surface area, ASD and TD exhibited statistically comparable age-related development during childhood. Across childhood, ASD relative to TD participants tended to have higher mean levels of gyrification in specific regions. Within ASD, those with higher Social Responsiveness Scale total raw scores tended to have greater age-related increase in gyrification in specific regions during childhood.ConclusionsASD is characterized by cortical neuroanatomical abnormalities that are age-, measure-, statistical model-, and region-dependent. The current study is the first to examine the development of all four cortical measures in one of the largest pre-adolescent samples. Strikingly, Neurosynth-based quantitative reverse inference of the surviving clusters suggests that many of the regions identified above are related to social perception, language, self-referential, and action observation networks—those frequently found to be functionally altered in individuals with ASD. The comprehensive, multilevel analyses across a wide range of cortical measures help fill a knowledge gap and present a complex but rich picture of neuroanatomical developmental differences in children with ASD.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13229-016-0076-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A systematic review of structural MRI biomarkers in autism spectrum disorder: A machine learning perspective

“…One consistent change observed was an increased whole brain volume, with greater increases compared to controls observed among younger patients (Libero et al, 2016; Nordahl et al, 2013), which is consistent with the brain overgrowth theory and presence of restrictive and repetitive behaviours (Courchesne et al, 2003). Other consistent findings include an increased in brain volume (Riddle et al, 2017; Turner et al, 2016) in frontal and temporal lobes (Foster et al, 2015; Lim et al, 2015), increased CT in the frontal lobe (Hyde et al, 2009; Patriquin et al, 2016), increased SA (Ohta et al, 2016) and GI (Yang et al, 2016) globally, increased CSF and lateral ventricle volume (Haar et al, 2016; Shen et al, 2017), as well as reduced CC volume (Fredo et al, 2014; Haar et al, 2016). Finally, reduced cerebellum and cerebellar vermis volumes observed in multiple studies (Brun et al, 2009; Foster et al, 2015; Ure et al, 2016) is consistent with post‐mortem findings of reduced Purjinke cell numbers in autopsy studies of ASD.…”

“…It was also unclear from the reviewed studies in Supplementary Table 2 as to the developmental trajectory of ASD, with four studies reporting accelerated thinning (Auzias et al, 2016; Koolschijn and Geurts, 2016; Wallace et al, 2015; Zielinski et al, 2014) and another four studies reporting slowed thinning (Doyle‐Thomas et al, 2013a; Khundrakpam et al, 2017; Sussman et al, 2015; Yang et al, 2016), reflecting the inconsistencies in ASD development observed for the whole brain volume (ICV). Despite this, increased CT was associated with poorer outcomes across multiple ASD severity measures, including social communication language ability (Khundrakpam et al, 2017; Sharda et al, 2016a, 2016b) and the ADOS (Moradi et al, 2017; Sato et al, 2013), supporting this measure as a useful biomarker of autism.…”

Adolescent maturation of the relationship between cortical gyrification and cognitive ability

“…Not only do lGI brain-cognition relationships shift over adolescence, frontoparietal changes are instrumental in contributing to the maturation of motor response inhibition ability. Abnormal local cortical gyrification has been proposed as a possible endophenotype for numerous neuropsychiatric disorders (Fan et al, 2013; Hyatt et al, 2012; Liu et al, 2016; White and Gottesman, 2012; Yang et al, 2016) that arise in childhood and adolescence (Paus et al, 2008). Thus, it is of obvious interest to chart the normative trajectory of such associations, determine if particular regional gyrification patterns are cognitively specific, and seek evidence for what specific physiological processes might underlie the normative reductions in lGI that have been observed across multiple studies.…”

Correlatos estructurales de las alteraciones cognitivas en niños con TEA

“…Pocos estudios se han centrado en la franja de edad previa a la adolescencia. Los niños que participan en el presente estudio tienen edades comprendidas entre 8 y 12 años, etapa importante porque aún no se han producido cambios significativos estructurales y funcionales en el desarrollo cerebral característicos de la adolescencia (por ejemplo, cambios en la poda sináptica, en la mielinización, cambios volumétricos en estructuras subcorticales, diferencias sexuales en la conducta y en la cognición) (Giedd et al, 2009;Yang, Beam, Pelphrey, Abdullahi & Jou, 2016;Lenroot et al, 2007;Dennison et al, 2013).…”

“…Los datos obtenidos en la comparación de ambos grupos de participantes respecto al TIV no revelaron ninguna diferencia significativa, resultado también aportado en otros estudios Hollander et al, 2005;Schumann et al, 2004;Say et al, 2014;Hardan et al, 2008a;Yang, Beam, Pelphrey, Abdullahi & Jou, 2016). De manera que, a nivel de TIV, en nuestro estudio tampoco se encontraron diferencias entre grupos ni en el volumen total cerebral, ni en el volumen de SG, volumen de SB pero sí una tendencia hacia la significación en el líquido cefalorraquídeo.…”