Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia share a substantial number of etiologic and phenotypic characteristics. Still, no direct comparison of both disorders has been performed to identify differences and commonalities in brain structure. In this voxel based morphometry study, 34 patients with autism spectrum disorder, 21 patients with schizophrenia and 26 typically developed control subjects were included to identify global and regional brain volume alterations. No global gray matter or white matter differences were found between groups. In regional data, patients with autism spectrum disorder compared to typically developed control subjects showed smaller gray matter volume in the amygdala, insula, and anterior medial prefrontal cortex. Compared to patients with schizophrenia, patients with autism spectrum disorder displayed smaller gray matter volume in the left insula. Disorder specific positive correlations were found between mentalizing ability and left amygdala volume in autism spectrum disorder, and hallucinatory behavior and insula volume in schizophrenia. Results suggest the involvement of social brain areas in both disorders. Further studies are needed to replicate these findings and to quantify the amount of distinct and overlapping neural correlates in autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are biologically based psychiatric disorders that share a substantial number of etiologic factors and phenotypic characteristics
Rare and partly overlapping copy number variants have been identified to be a strong genetic risk factor for both disorders [1], and relatives of individuals with ASD are more likely to have a family history of SCZ [2]. Both disorders are influenced by deficits of the social brain [2,3], a specialized neural network dedicated to social cognition comprising in particular the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the posterior temporal sulcus, and the adjacent temporo-parietal junction, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the insula, the amygdala, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the interparietal sulcus [4,5]
Global brain measures Global brain measures were calculated in ASD
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are biologically based psychiatric disorders that share a substantial number of etiologic factors and phenotypic characteristics. Rare and partly overlapping copy number variants have been identified to be a strong genetic risk factor for both disorders [1], and relatives of individuals with ASD are more likely to have a family history of SCZ [2] Both disorders are influenced by deficits of the social brain [2,3], a specialized neural network dedicated to social cognition comprising in particular the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the posterior temporal sulcus, and the adjacent temporo-parietal junction, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), the insula, the amygdala, the inferior frontal gyrus, and the interparietal sulcus [4,5]. In ASD reduced activation in regions of the social brain during processing of social information has been described in the right pSTS, amygdala and fusiform gyrus [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21]
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