Atypical hemispheric asymmetry in the arcuate fasciculus of completely nonverbal children with autism

Abstract

Despite the fact that as many as 25% of the children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders are nonverbal, surprisingly little research has been conducted on this population. In particular, the mechanisms that underlie their absence of speech remain unknown. Using diffusion tensor imaging, we compared the structure of a language-related white matter tract (the arcuate fasciculus, AF) in five completely nonverbal children with autism to that of typically developing children. We found that, as a group, the nonverbal children did not show the expected left-right AF asymmetry--rather, four of the five nonverbal children actually showed the reversed pattern. It is possible that this unusual pattern of asymmetry may underlie some of the severe language deficits commonly found in autism, particularly in children whose speech fails to develop. Furthermore, novel interventions (such as auditory-motor mapping training) designed to engage brain regions that are connected via the AF may have important clinical potential for facilitating expressive language in nonverbal children with autism.