Lurie Family Foundations MEG Imaging Center, Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, United States.
Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, United States.
Neuroimage Clin. 2017 Jun 23;16:624-633. doi: 10.1016/j.nicl.2017.06.026. eCollection 2017.
The purpose of this study was to compare somatosensory responses from a group of children with epilepsy and a group of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with age matched TD controls. We hypothesized that the magnitude of the tactile "P50m" somatosensory response would be reduced in both patient groups, possibly due to reduced GABAergic signaling as has been implicated in a variety of previous animal models and in vivo human MRS studies. We observed significant (~ 25%) decreases in tactile P50m dipole moment values from the source localized tactile P50m response, both for children with epilepsy and for children with ASD. In addition, the latency of the tactile P50m peak was observed to be equivalent between TD and ASD groups but was significantly delayed in children with epilepsy by ~ 6 ms. Our data support the hypothesis of impaired GABAergic signaling in both children with ASD and children with epilepsy. Further work is needed to replicate these findings and directly relate them to both in vivo measures of GABA via e.g. magnetic resonance spectroscopy and psychophysical assessments of somatosensory function, and behavioral indices.
本研究旨在比较一组癫痫儿童和一组自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童与年龄匹配的 TD 对照组的体感反应。我们假设触觉“P50m”体感反应的幅度在两个患者组中都会降低，这可能是由于 GABA 能信号传导减少所致，这在多种先前的动物模型和体内人类 MRS 研究中都有涉及。我们观察到来自源定位触觉 P50m 反应的触觉 P50m 偶极矩值有显著（~25%）的降低，无论是癫痫儿童还是 ASD 儿童。此外，触觉 P50m 峰值的潜伏期在 TD 和 ASD 组之间是相等的，但在癫痫儿童中显著延迟了约 6ms。我们的数据支持 GABA 能信号传导受损的假说，这在 ASD 儿童和癫痫儿童中都存在。需要进一步的工作来复制这些发现，并通过例如磁共振波谱和体感功能的心理物理评估以及行为指标，直接将其与 GABA 的体内测量联系起来。
