Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan.
PLoS One. 2011 Apr 26;6(4):e18905. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018905.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by aberrant neurodevelopment. Although the ASD brain undergoes precocious growth followed by decelerated maturation during early postnatal period of childhood, the neuroimaging approach has not been empirically applied to investigate how the ASD brain develops during adolescence.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We enrolled 25 male adolescents with high functioning ASD and 25 typically developing controls for voxel-based morphometric analysis of structural magnetic resonance image. Results indicate that there is an imbalance of regional gray matter volumes and concentrations along with no global brain enlargement in adolescents with high functioning ASD relative to controls. Notably, the right inferior parietal lobule, a role in social cognition, have a significant interaction of age by groups as indicated by absence of an age-related gain of regional gray matter volume and concentration for neurodevelopmental maturation during adolescence.
CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The findings indicate the neural correlates of social cognition exhibits aberrant neurodevelopment during adolescence in ASD, which may cast some light on the brain growth dysregulation hypothesis. The period of abnormal brain growth during adolescence may be characteristic of ASD. Age effects must be taken into account while measures of structural neuroimaging have been clinically put forward as potential phenotypes for ASD.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的特征是神经发育异常。尽管 ASD 大脑在儿童期的早期经历了过早的生长，然后是成熟的减速，但神经影像学方法尚未被经验性地应用于研究 ASD 大脑在青春期是如何发育的。
方法/主要发现：我们招募了 25 名高功能 ASD 男性青少年和 25 名典型发育对照者，对结构磁共振图像进行基于体素的形态计量学分析。结果表明，与对照组相比，高功能 ASD 青少年的大脑存在区域性灰质体积和浓度失衡，而没有整体脑增大。值得注意的是，右侧顶下小叶，在社会认知中起作用，在年龄组之间存在显著的年龄交互作用，表明在青春期的神经发育成熟过程中，该区域的灰质体积和浓度没有与年龄相关的增加。
结论/意义：研究结果表明，ASD 青少年时期的社会认知神经相关性存在异常神经发育，这可能为大脑生长失调假说提供一些启示。青春期异常的大脑生长时期可能是 ASD 的特征。在将结构神经影像学的测量方法作为 ASD 的潜在表型提出临床应用时，必须考虑年龄效应。
