Lurie Family Foundations MEG Imaging Center, Department of Radiology, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Adv Neurobiol. 2024;40:455-489. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-69491-2_16.
There is no simple blood test for autism. Consequently, much attention has been paid to identifying noninvasive biomarkers using imaging (e.g., Magnetic resonance imaging, MRI) and electrophysiological (e.g., electroencephalography, EEG and magnetoencephalography, MEG) methods. While, in general, these lack direct biological specificity, they can (in principle) provide a useful tool, or suite of tools, for diagnostic, prognostic, stratification, and response monitoring purposes.This chapter focuses on the pursuit of biomarkers using magnetoencephalography (MEG). While closely related to the more common electroencephalography (EEG), MEG offers some unique characteristics (such as improved spatial resolution, in combination with real-time temporal resolution and spectral discrimination), that might be considered impactful in the pursuit of biomarkers.Given the widely-acknowledged heterogeneity of ASD ("if you've seen one child with autism, then you've seen one child with autism"), the tide of research is perhaps shifting away from diagnostic biomarkers toward biomarkers that can help stratify patients according to some similarity in biological basis, etiology, or pathway. This approach, somewhat pragmatic, may be of benefit when designing and conducting clinical trials of putative therapeutics, or when optimally designing behavioral supports (when "therapy" may not be indicated).Ultimately, MEG-derived biomarkers, however advantageous in themselves, may likely find a place as reference in the prioritization and roll-out of candidate biomarkers established using other modalities, more accessible and available to the global community.
自闭症没有简单的血液检测方法。因此，人们非常关注使用成像（例如磁共振成像，MRI）和电生理（例如脑电图，EEG 和脑磁图，MEG）方法来识别非侵入性生物标志物。虽然这些方法通常缺乏直接的生物学特异性，但它们可以（原则上）为诊断，预后，分层和响应监测目的提供有用的工具或工具套件。本章专注于使用脑磁图（MEG）来寻找生物标志物。虽然与更常见的脑电图（EEG）密切相关，但 MEG 具有一些独特的特征（例如，结合实时时间分辨率和频谱分辨力，提高了空间分辨率），这在寻找生物标志物时可能会被认为是有影响力的。鉴于 ASD 的广泛认可的异质性（“如果您已经看到一个自闭症儿童，那么您已经看到了一个自闭症儿童”），研究的潮流可能正在从诊断生物标志物转向可以根据生物学基础，病因或途径的某些相似性对患者进行分层的生物标志物。这种方法有些务实，在设计和进行潜在治疗药物的临床试验或最佳设计行为支持（当“治疗”可能不适用时）时可能会有所帮助。最终，MEG 衍生的生物标志物本身可能具有优势，但可能会找到一个位置，作为使用其他模态建立的候选生物标志物的优先级和推出的参考，这些模态对全球社区来说更加容易获得和可用。
