Superior temporal sulcus anatomical abnormalities in childhood autism: a voxel-based morphometry MRI study

By N. Boddaert, N. Chabane, H. Gervais, Catriona D. Good, M. Bourgeois, M. Plumet, C. Barthélémy, M. Mouren, E. Artiges, Yves Samson and 3 more. NeuroImage, 2004

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The underlying neurobiology of autism, a severe pervasive developmental disorder, remains unknown. Few neocortical brain MRI abnormalities have been reported. Using rest functional brain imaging, two independent studies have described localized bilateral temporal hypoperfusion in children with primary autism. In order to search for convergent evidence of anatomical abnormalities in autistic children, we performed an anatomical MRI study using optimized whole-brain voxel-based morphometry (VBM). High-resolution 3-D T1-weighted MRI data sets were acquired in 21 children with primary autism (mean age 9.3 +/- 2.2 years) and 12 healthy control children (mean age 10.8 +/- 2.7 years). By comparing autistic children to normal children, we found bilaterally significant decreases of grey matter concentration located in superior temporal sulcus (STS) (P < 0.05 corrected, after small volume correction; SVC). Children with autism were also found to have a decrease of white matter concentration located in the right temporal pole and in cerebellum (P < 0.05, corrected) compared to normal children. These results suggest that autism is associated with bilateral anatomical abnormalities localized in the STS and are remarkably consistent with functional hypoperfusion previously reported in children with autism. The multimodal STS areas are involved in highest level of cortical integration of both sensory and limbic information. Moreover, the STS is now recognized as a key cortical area of the "social brain" and is implicated in social perceptual skills that are characteristically impaired in autism. Therefore, the convergent anatomical and functional temporal abnormalities observed in autism may be important in the understanding of brain behavior relationships in this severe developmental disorder.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Neurology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c2a9f00e2fe699d481fe8ae56e2348102729142d

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Citations in the corpus

Voxel-based morphometry of the human brain: Methods and applications (2005, background): “In recent years, VBM studies have been successful in characterizing structural brain differences in a variety of diseases including schizophrenia [10], developmental and congenital disorders [11], autism [12], Kallman’s syndrome [13], Klinefelter’s syndrome [14], bipolar disorders [15], cluster head”
The neural basis of human moral cognition (2005, unknown): “In support of this view, morphological abnormalities of the STS region have been implicated in the impaired social decoding observed in autis”
Increased dendritic spine densities on cortical projection neurons in autism spectrum disorders. (2010, background): “These regions also show abnormal activation in auditory studies, as well as the processing of simple (Gage et al., 2003) and complex speech-related sounds (Gervais et al., 2004; Boddaert et al., 2004; Just et al., 2004).”
Gaze Cueing of Attention (2007, background): “As with macaques, the human brain region that is responsive to perceived gaze direction is the STS area, with both dynamic (Hooker et al., 2003; Puce et al., 1998) and static face displays (Hoffman & Haxby, 2000).1 This activation does not appear to depend on the presence of a face per se because av”
Cortical thickness analysis in autism with heat kernel smoothing (2005, background): “Using the same VBM, Boddaert et al. (2004) found bilaterally significant decreases of gray matter concentration in superior temporal sulcus but did not detect any other abnormality outside the temporal lobes.”
Uniquely human social cognition. (2006, background): “Conversely, high-resolution voxel-based morphometry in the brains of twenty one autistic children reveals normal vMPFC [21], which is consistent with the dissociation between impaired Theory of Mind and relatively intact emotional empathy in autism.”
Investigating the predictive value of whole-brain structural MR scans in autism: A pattern classification approach (2010, methodology): “Similar areas have previously been highlighted by studies using VBM-type techniques (Boddaert et al., 2004; Craig et al., 2007; Waiter et al., 2004).”