Barnea-Goraly Naama, Kwon Hower, Menon Vinod, Eliez Stephan, Lotspeich Linda, Reiss Allan L
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, 401 Quarry Road, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
Biol Psychiatry. 2004 Feb 1;55(3):323-6. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2003.10.022.
Individuals with autism have severe difficulties in social communication and relationships. Prior studies have suggested that abnormal connections between brain regions important for social cognition may contribute to the social deficits seen in autism.
In this study, we used diffusion tensor imaging to investigate white matter structure in seven male children and adolescents with autism and nine age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control subjects.
Reduced fractional anisotropy (FA) values were observed in white matter adjacent to the ventromedial prefrontal cortices and in the anterior cingulate gyri as well as in the temporoparietal junctions. Additional clusters of reduced FA values were seen adjacent to the superior temporal sulcus bilaterally, in the temporal lobes approaching the amygdala bilaterally, in occipitotemporal tracts, and in the corpus callosum.
Disruption of white matter tracts between regions implicated in social functioning may contribute to impaired social cognition in autism.
自闭症患者在社交沟通和人际关系方面存在严重困难。先前的研究表明，对社会认知至关重要的脑区之间的异常连接可能导致自闭症患者出现社交缺陷。
在本研究中，我们使用扩散张量成像来研究7名患有自闭症的男性儿童和青少年以及9名年龄、性别和智商匹配的对照受试者的白质结构。
在腹内侧前额叶皮质附近的白质、前扣带回以及颞顶联合区观察到分数各向异性（FA）值降低。在双侧颞上沟附近、双侧靠近杏仁核的颞叶、枕颞束以及胼胝体中还发现了FA值降低的其他区域。
参与社会功能的区域之间白质束的破坏可能导致自闭症患者社会认知受损。
