Chen Jierong, Wei Zhen, Xu Chuangyong, Peng Ziwen, Yang Junjie, Wan Guobin, Chen Bin, Gong Jianhua, Zhou Keying
Department of Child Psychiatry and Rehabilitation, Affliated Shenzhen Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital, Southern Medical University, Shenzhen, China.
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, South China Normal University, Ministry of Education, Guangzhou, China.
Front Psychiatry. 2023 Jun 16;14:1132284. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1132284. eCollection 2023.
Evidence suggests that there is a robust relationship between altered neuroanatomy and autistic symptoms in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social visual preference, which is regulated by specific brain regions, is also related to symptom severity. However, there were a few studies explored the potential relationships among brain structure, symptom severity, and social visual preference.
The current study investigated relationships among brain structure, social visual preference, and symptom severity in 43 children with ASD and 26 typically developing (TD) children (aged 2-6 years).
Significant differences were found in social visual preference and cortical morphometry between the two groups. Decreased percentage of fixation time in digital social images (%DSI) was negatively related to not only the thickness of the left fusiform gyrus (FG) and right insula, but also the Calibrated Severity Scores for the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Social Affect (ADOS-SA-CSS). Mediation analysis showed that %DSI partially mediated the relationship between neuroanatomical alterations (specifically, thickness of the left FG and right insula) and symptom severity.
These findings offer initial evidence that atypical neuroanatomical alterations may not only result in direct effects on symptom severity but also lead to indirect effects on symptom severity through social visual preference. This finding enhances our understanding of the multiple neural mechanisms implicated in ASD.
有证据表明，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者的神经解剖结构改变与自闭症症状之间存在密切关系。由特定脑区调节的社会视觉偏好也与症状严重程度有关。然而，很少有研究探讨脑结构、症状严重程度和社会视觉偏好之间的潜在关系。
本研究调查了43名ASD儿童和26名发育正常（TD）儿童（年龄在2至6岁之间）的脑结构、社会视觉偏好和症状严重程度之间的关系。
两组在社会视觉偏好和皮质形态测量方面存在显著差异。数字社交图像注视时间百分比（%DSI）的降低不仅与左侧梭状回（FG）和右侧脑岛的厚度呈负相关，还与自闭症诊断观察量表-社会情感（ADOS-SA-CSS）的校正严重程度评分呈负相关。中介分析表明，%DSI部分介导了神经解剖学改变（特别是左侧FG和右侧脑岛的厚度）与症状严重程度之间的关系。
这些发现提供了初步证据，表明非典型神经解剖学改变不仅可能直接影响症状严重程度，还可能通过社会视觉偏好对症状严重程度产生间接影响。这一发现增强了我们对ASD中涉及的多种神经机制的理解。
