自闭症患者的小脑异常？

Cerebellar Atypicalities in Autism?

机构信息

Department of Translational Neuro-Psychiatry, Université Paris Est Créteil, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale U955, Créteil, France; Fondation FondaMental, Créteil, France; Département Médico-Universitaire de Psychiatrie et d'Addictologie, Fédération Hospitalo-Universitaire de Médecine de Précision en Psychiatrie, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris, Hôpitaux Universitaires Henri Mondor, Créteil, France; Neurospin, CEA, Paris-Saclay University, Gif-sur-Yvette; Center for the Developing Brain, Child Mind Institute, New York, New York.

Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Department for Cognitive Neuroscience, Radboud University Medical Center Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Methods of Plasticity Research, Department of Psychology, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.

出版信息

Biol Psychiatry. 2022 Oct 15;92(8):674-682. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.05.020. Epub 2022 May 22.

DOI:10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.05.020

PMID:36137706

Abstract

BACKGROUND

The cerebellum contains more than 50% of the brain's neurons and is involved in social cognition. Cerebellar anatomical atypicalities have repeatedly been reported in individuals with autism. However, studies have yielded inconsistent findings, likely because of a lack of statistical power, and did not capture the clinical and neuroanatomical diversity of autism. Our aim was to better understand cerebellar anatomy and its diversity in autism.

METHODS

We studied cerebellar gray matter morphology in 274 individuals with autism and 219 control subjects of a multicenter European cohort, EU-AIMS LEAP (European Autism Interventions-A Multicentre Study for Developing New Medications; Longitudinal European Autism Project). To ensure the robustness of our results, we conducted lobular parcellation of the cerebellum with 2 different pipelines in addition to voxel-based morphometry. We performed statistical analyses with linear, multivariate (including normative modeling), and meta-analytic approaches to capture the diversity of cerebellar anatomy in individuals with autism and control subjects. Finally, we performed a dimensional analysis of cerebellar anatomy in an independent cohort of 352 individuals with autism-related symptoms.

RESULTS

We did not find any significant difference in the cerebellum when comparing individuals with autism and control subjects using linear models. In addition, there were no significant deviations in our normative models in the cerebellum in individuals with autism. Finally, we found no evidence of cerebellar atypicalities related to age, IQ, sex, or social functioning in individuals with autism.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite positive results published in the last decade from relatively small samples, our results suggest that there is no striking difference in cerebellar anatomy of individuals with autism.

摘要

背景

小脑包含了大脑神经元的 50%以上，并且参与了社会认知。小脑的解剖结构异常在自闭症患者中已经被多次报道。然而，由于缺乏统计学效力，这些研究的结果并不一致，并且没有捕捉到自闭症的临床和神经解剖多样性。我们的目的是更好地了解自闭症患者小脑的解剖结构及其多样性。

方法

我们研究了来自欧洲多中心队列 EU-AIMS LEAP（欧洲自闭症干预-开发新药物的多中心研究；纵向欧洲自闭症项目）的 274 名自闭症患者和 219 名对照者的小脑灰质形态。为了确保研究结果的稳健性，我们使用了 2 种不同的流水线进行小脑的叶区划分，除了体素形态测量法外，还进行了基于体素的形态测量法。我们使用线性、多元（包括规范建模）和荟萃分析方法进行统计分析，以捕捉自闭症患者和对照组小脑解剖结构的多样性。最后，我们在一个包含 352 名具有自闭症相关症状的独立队列中进行了小脑解剖的维度分析。