High angular resolution diffusion imaging in a child with autism spectrum disorder and comparison with his unaffected identical twin

Conti, Eugenia and Pannek, Kerstin and Calderoni, Sara and Gaglianese, Anna and Fiori, Simona and Brovedani, Paola and Scelfo, Danilo and Rose, Stephen and Tosetti, Michela and Cioni, Giovanni and Guzzetta, Andrea (2015) High angular resolution diffusion imaging in a child with autism spectrum disorder and comparison with his unaffected identical twin. Functional Neurology, 30 (3). pp. 203-208. ISSN 1971-3274

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Abstract

In recent years, the use of brain diffusion MRI has led to the hypothesis that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show abnormally connected brains. We used the model of disease-discordant identical twins to test the hypothesis that higher-order diffusion MRI protocols are able to detect abnormal connectivity in a single subject. We studied the structural connectivity of the brain of a child with ASD, and of that of his unaffected identical twin, using high angular resolution diffusion imaging (HARDI) probabilistic tractography. Cortical regions were automatically parcellated from high-resolution structural images, and HARDI-based connection matrices were produced for statistical comparison. Differences in diffusion indexes between subjects were tested by Wilcoxon signed rank test. Tracts were defined as discordant when they showed a between-subject difference of 10 percent or more. Around 11 percent of the discordant intra-hemispheric tracts showed lower fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the ASD twin, while only 1 percent showed higher values. This difference was significant. Our findings in a disease-discordant identical twin pair confirm previous literature consistently reporting lower FA values in children with ASD.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Abnormal connectivity, autism, connectome, correlation matrix
Subjects: 600 Tecnologia - Scienze applicate > 610 Medicina e salute (Classificare qui la tecnologia dei servizi medici) > 616 Malattie (classificare qui la Clinica medica, la medicina basata sull'evidenza, la Medicina interna, la Medicina sperimentale) > 616.8 Malattie del sistema nervoso e disturbi mentali (Classificare qui la Neuropsichiatria, la Neurologia) > 616.85 Malattie varie del sistema nervoso e disturbi mentali di diverso genere > 616.858 Disturbi della personalità, sessuali, dell’identità di genere, del controllo degli impulsi, fittizi, dello sviluppo, dell’apprendimento; comportamento violento, ritardo mentale > 616.8588 Ritardo mentale; disturbi dello sviluppo e dell’apprendimento (Classificare qui i disturbi mentali solitamente diagnosticati in primo luogo nell’infanzia, nell’adolescenza) > 616.85882 Autismo (Classificare qui le opere d’insieme sui disturbi pervasivi dello sviluppo)
Depositing User: Marina Spanti
Date Deposited: 24 Sep 2019 11:51
Last Modified: 24 Sep 2019 11:51
URI: http://eprints.bice.rm.cnr.it/id/eprint/12611

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