Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
ARTICLESMRI Neuroanatomy in Young Girls With Autism: A Preliminary Study
Section snippets
METHOD
The study was approved by the institutional review boards of Children's Hospital San Diego, the University of California, San Diego, and San Diego State University. Informed consent was obtained from the parents of each participant, and all of the subjects were paid for their participation. Participants were recruited as part of an ongoing longitudinal study of brain development in autism.
Diagnostic and Behavioral Results
No significant differences were observed between the girls and boys with autism in overall symptom severity as evidenced by similar Childhood Autism Rating Scale, Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised domain scores, and the distribution of ADOS modules administered within each group (Table 1). There were also no significant differences observed with respect to nonverbal and verbal abilities. Although the children with autism, as expected, significantly differed from typically developing children
DISCUSSION
To our knowledge, this is the first study to specifically examine the neuroanatomical phenotype in young girls with autism. Structure size and the relationship between size and age were examined. Similarities as well as differences were observed among the girls and boys with autism. When compared with same-sex controls, common sites of abnormality in raw anatomical measures among the girls and boys with autism included enlargement in whole brain, cerebral gray, frontal gray, and cerebellar
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2021, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent PsychiatryCitation Excerpt :Similar sex-specific head size abnormalities were seen in a large population-based study at birth and throughout early childhood in children with ASD.18 In addition, differences in total brain volume, and in gray and white matter volumes in different brain regions, were seen throughout childhood in boys and girls with ASD.14,16,18,20,24–26 Furthermore, our study suggests that the observed sex-specific prenatal head growth abnormalities in fetuses later diagnosed with ASD are correlated with symptom severity in both sexes.
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2020, Handbook of Clinical NeurologyCitation Excerpt :Qualitative sex/gender-modulation has been found across the lifespan using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. Bloss and Courchesne (2007) found diagnostic differences in total and regional GM and WM that were present in both boys and girls with autism as well as a qualitatively different pattern showing a more widespread diagnostic effect on brain volume differences within girls compared to boys, including an opposite effect in the cerebellum. The previously discussed study by Schumann et al. (2010) that showed quantitative differences also showed qualitative sex/gender-modulation with more widespread findings in autistic girls.
Supported by NINDS grant R01 NS-19855. The authors acknowledge the families who made this research possible. They thank Heather Davis, Christina Karns, Zachary Tigue, Rebecca Ziccardi, Weifang Zhou, and Dr. Ruth A. Carper for conducting image processing and analysis. They also thank Drs. Cathy Lord, Alan Lincoln, Senia Pizzo, and Natacha Akshoomoff for collection of diagnostic and cognitive data, and Dr. Georg E. Matt for his comments on a previous draft of this manuscript.
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