Archival ReportA Meta-Analysis of the Corpus Callosum in Autism
Section snippets
Search Strategy and Exclusion Criteria
PubMed/MEDLINE and PsycINFO were searched for studies from January 1970 to June 2008 using the terms “autism or PDD or pervasive developmental disorder” and “corpus callosum.” A specific search for Asperger's disorder was also done but no published studies were identified. Additional studies were identified by reviewing the references of each article found. Studies were included if they reported measurement for the total corpus callosum area in patients with autism and healthy control subjects.
Results
Ten studies met inclusion criteria with each study providing one effect size (Table 1). Of these 10 studies, two studies only provided total CC area (33, 34) and two studies only provided data for broad regions but not Witelson subdivisions (24, 27). One study included only enough information to evaluate W1 through W4 and W7 (32). Another study only included enough information to evaluate W4 through W7 (23).
Table 1 presents demographics and study characteristics. Studies contributed 503 total
Discussion
Findings from the present investigation provide strong support to previous studies suggesting involvement of CC in the pathophysiology of autism. The present meta-analytic results indicate that total CC area is smaller in autism, consistent with studies implicating the CC in emotional and social functioning (47) and higher cognitive processes such as decoding nonliteral meaning, affective prosody, and understanding humor (48, 49). The CC provides integrated interhemispheric communication
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