Autism Research Unit, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Autism Res. 2012 Feb;5(1):49-66. doi: 10.1002/aur.235. Epub 2011 Dec 2.
Structural alterations in brain morphology have been inconsistently reported in children compared to adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We assessed these differences by performing meta-analysis on the data from 19 voxel-based morphometry studies. Common findings across the age groups were grey matter reduction in left putamen and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and grey matter increases in the lateral PFC, while white matter decreases were seen mainly in the children in frontostriatal pathways. In the ASD sample, children/adolescents were more likely than adults to have increased grey matter in bilateral fusiform gyrus, right cingulate and insula. Results show that clear maturational differences exist in social cognition and limbic processing regions only in children/adolescents and not in adults with ASD, and may underlie the emotional regulation that improves with age in this population.
与自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）成人相比，儿童的大脑形态结构改变一直存在不一致的报道。我们通过对 19 项基于体素的形态计量学研究的数据进行荟萃分析来评估这些差异。在年龄组中常见的发现是左侧壳核和内侧前额叶皮质（mPFC）的灰质减少，外侧前额叶皮质的灰质增加，而额纹状体通路上主要观察到白质减少。在 ASD 样本中，儿童/青少年比成年人更有可能出现双侧梭状回、右扣带回和岛叶灰质增加。结果表明，只有儿童/青少年的社会认知和边缘处理区域存在明显的成熟差异，而 ASD 成人则没有，这可能是该人群随年龄增长情绪调节能力提高的基础。
