Andrews Derek Sayre, Avino Thomas A, Gudbrandsen Maria, Daly Eileen, Marquand Andre, Murphy Clodagh M, Lai Meng-Chuan, Lombardo Michael V, Ruigrok Amber N V, Williams Steven C, Bullmore Edward T, Suckling John, Baron-Cohen Simon, Craig Michael C, Murphy Declan G M, Ecker Christine
Department of Forensic and Neurodevelopmental Sciences, Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London SE5 8AF, UK.
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, M.I.N.D. Institute, University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA, USA.
Cereb Cortex. 2017 Feb 1;27(2):877-887. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhw404.
Atypical cortical organization and reduced integrity of the gray-white matter boundary have been reported by postmortem studies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there are no in vivo studies that examine these particular features of cortical organization in ASD. Hence, we used structural magnetic resonance imaging to examine differences in tissue contrast between gray and white matter in 98 adults with ASD and 98 typically developing controls, to test the hypothesis that individuals with ASD have significantly reduced tissue contrast. More specifically, we examined contrast as a percentage between gray and white matter tissue signal intensities (GWPC) sampled at the gray-white matter boundary, and across different cortical layers. We found that individuals with ASD had significantly reduced GWPC in several clusters throughout the cortex (cluster, P < 0.05). As expected, these reductions were greatest when tissue intensities were sampled close to gray-white matter interface, which indicates a less distinct gray-white matter boundary in ASD. Our in vivo findings of reduced GWPC in ASD are therefore consistent with prior postmortem findings of a less well-defined gray-white matter boundary in ASD. Taken together, these results indicate that GWPC might be utilized as an in vivo proxy measure of atypical cortical microstructural organization in future studies.
尸检研究报告称，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者存在非典型的皮质组织以及灰白质边界完整性降低的情况。然而，尚无体内研究考察ASD患者皮质组织的这些特定特征。因此，我们使用结构磁共振成像来检查98名成年ASD患者和98名发育正常的对照者的灰质和白质之间的组织对比度差异，以检验ASD患者组织对比度显著降低的假设。更具体地说，我们将对比度作为在灰白质边界以及不同皮质层采样的灰质和白质组织信号强度之间的百分比（GWPC）进行了检查。我们发现，ASD患者在整个皮质的几个簇中GWPC显著降低（簇，P < 0.05）。正如预期的那样，当在接近灰白质界面处采样组织强度时，这些降低最为明显，这表明ASD患者的灰白质边界不太清晰。因此，我们关于ASD患者GWPC降低的体内研究结果与先前关于ASD患者灰白质边界定义不明确的尸检结果一致。综上所述，这些结果表明，GWPC可能在未来研究中用作非典型皮质微观结构组织的体内替代指标。
