Abstract
Autism is a group of complex neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired social interaction and restricted/repetitive behavior. We performed a large-scale retrospective analysis of 1,996 clinical neurological structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examinations of 781 autistic and 988 control subjects (aged 0–32 years), and extracted regionally distributed cortical thickness measurements, including average measurements as well as standard deviations which supports the assessment of intra-regional cortical thickness variability. The youngest autistic participants (<2.5 years) were diagnosed after imaging and were identified retrospectively. The largest effect sizes and the most common findings not previously published in the scientific literature involve abnormal intra-regional variability in cortical thickness affecting many (but not all) regions of the autistic brain, suggesting irregular gray matter development in autism that can be detected with MRI. Atypical developmental patterns have been detected as early as 0 years old in individuals who would later be diagnosed with autism.
Highlights
Autism is characterized by impaired social communication, deficits in social reciprocity and repetitive/stereotyped behaviors (Gillberg, 1993; Wing, 1997)
Existing studies have been limited in the populations assessed, providing incomplete data regarding the developmental stages of autistic participants, in terms of the ages of participants included in the analysis and the number of participants included in the age range being evaluated (Dziobek et al, 2010; Ecker et al, 2010, 2013, 2014; Groen et al, 2010; Jiao et al, 2010; Schumann et al, 2010; Schaer et al, 2013, 2015; Wallace et al, 2013; Zielinski et al, 2014; Lefebvre et al, 2015; Richter et al, 2015; Haar et al, 2016; Yang et al, 2016)
There were a large number of regions of the brain exhibiting abnormal intra-regional variability in cortical thickness as measured with the standard deviation
Summary
Autism is characterized by impaired social communication, deficits in social reciprocity and repetitive/stereotyped behaviors (Gillberg, 1993; Wing, 1997). The analysis of autistic participants who have undergone structural MRI examinations has been the subject of many studies in the literature that have incorporated distributed quantification of volumes, cortical thicknesses, surface areas etc. Investigating average cortical thickness is common in the literature (Jiao et al, 2010; Ecker et al, 2013, 2014; Zielinski et al, 2014; Yang et al, 2016), none of the studies appears to have considered intra-regional cortical thickness variability as a measurement of potential interest in autism. Examples of two examinations exhibiting differing cortical thickness standard deviation measurements are provided in Figure 1 to illustrate intra-regional cortical thickness variability to the reader
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