dti autism

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a common neurodevelopmental disorder, is the most frequent comorbid condition seen in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This high comorbidity between ADHD and ASD worsens symptom manifestations and complicates disease treatment and prognosis. It remains unclear whether individuals suffering with both ADHD and ASD, compared to individuals with ADHD only, share overlapping neural correlates associated with ADHD neuropathology, or exhibit a distinct neuropathological profile...

BACKGROUND: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental condition. Understanding the brain's microstructure and its relationship to clinical characteristics is important to advance our understanding of the neural supports underlying ASD. In the current work, we implemented Gray-Matter Based Spatial Statistics (GBSS) to examine and characterize cortical microstructure and assess differences between typically developing (TD) and autistic males. METHODS: A multi-shell diffusion MRI (dMRI) protocol was acquired from 83 TD and 70 autistic males (5-to-21-years) and fit to the DTI and NODDI models...

BACKGROUND: Elevated or reduced responses to sensory stimuli, known as sensory features, are common in autistic individuals and often impact quality of life. Little is known about the neurobiological basis of sensory features in autistic children. However, the brainstem may offer critical insights as it has been associated with both basic sensory processing and core features of autism. METHODS: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and parent-report of sensory features were acquired from 133 children (61 autistic children with and 72 non-autistic children, 6-11 years-old)...

The present study evaluated the effectiveness of using telehealth technologies to remotely train caregivers of children with ASD to conduct discrete-trial instruction (DTI). We used a multiple-baseline-across-participants design to evaluate caregiver correct implementation of the DTI procedures and child emission of independent correct tacts as dependent measures. We observed robust and immediate improvements for all three caregivers and two of three children. Treatment effects were maintained during follow-up and generalization probes...

This study used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) along the perivascular space (DTI-ALPS) to assess glymphatic system function in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to healthy controls. Patients with ASD may have glymphatic system dysfunction, which is related to age. We retrospectively included 30 children with ASD and 25 healthy controls in this study. 3T magnetic resonance imaging scanner was used to perform DTI magnetic resonance imaging on all participants, and the DTI-ALPS index was calculated from the DTI data...

Research aimed at understanding cognitive and brain aging in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is growing, but critical longitudinal work is scant. Adults with ASD struggle with tasks involving visual memory compared with neurotypical adults (NT). This may be related to differences in size or integrity of the hippocampus and its' primary structural connectivity pathway, the fornix. The aim of this study was to describe preliminary findings of longitudinal aging trajectories in short- and long-term visual memory abilities in middle-age and older adults with ASD, compared with matched NT adults...

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) has been used as an outcome measure in clinical trials for several psychiatric disorders but has rarely been explored in autism clinical trials. This is despite a large body of research suggesting altered white matter structure in autistic individuals. The current study is a secondary analysis of changes in white matter connectivity from a double-blind placebo-control trial of a single intravenous cord blood infusion in 2-7-year-old autistic children (1). Both clinical assessments and DTI were collected at baseline and 6 months after infusion...

There has been increasing evidence of White Matter (WM) microstructural disintegrity and connectome disruption in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). We evaluated the effects of age on WM microstructure by examining Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) metrics and connectome Edge Density (ED) in a large dataset of ASD and control patients from different age cohorts. N = 583 subjects from four studies from the National Database of Autism Research were included, representing four different age groups: (1) A Longitudinal MRI Study of Infants at Risk of Autism [infants, median age: 7 (interquartile range 1) months, n = 155], (2) Biomarkers of Autism at 12 months [toddlers, 32 (11)m, n = 102], (3) Multimodal Developmental Neurogenetics of Females with ASD [adolescents, 13...

AIM: The purpose of this study was to systematically review the neural similarities and differences in brain structure and function, measured by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in children with neurodevelopmental disorders that commonly co-occur to understand if and how they have shared neuronal characteristics. METHOD: Using systematic review methodology, the following databases were comprehensively searched: MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, CENTRAL, PsycINFO, and ProQuest from the earliest record up to December 2021...

Patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often show pervasive and complex language impairments that are closely associated with aberrant structural connectivity of language networks. However, the characteristics of white matter connectivity in ASD have remained inconclusive in previous diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies. The current meta-analysis aimed to comprehensively elucidate the abnormality in language-related white matter connectivity in individuals with ASD. We searched PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Medline databases to identify relevant studies...

Objective: Increasing evidence suggests that a subcortical pathway from the superior colliculus (SC) through the pulvinar to the amygdala plays a crucial role in mediating non-conscious processing in response to emotional visual stimuli. Given the atypical eye gaze and response patterns to visual affective stimuli in autism, we examined the functional and white matter structural difference of the pathway in boys with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) boys. Methods: A total of 38 boys with ASD and 38 TD boys were included...

OBJECTIVE: To assess whether white matter (WM) diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) derived measures correlate with tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) disease severity. COHORT AND METHODS: A multi-shell diffusion protocol was added to the clinical MRI brain scans of thirteen patients including 6 males and 7 females with a mean ± std age of 17.2 ± 5.8 years. Fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD) were generated from DTI and neurite density index (NDI), orientation dispersion index (ODI) and free water index (fiso) were generated from NODDI...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous syndrome characterized by behavioral features such as impaired social communication, repetitive behavior patterns, and a lack of interest in novel objects. A multimodal neuroimaging using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with ASD shows highly heterogeneous abnormalities in function and structure in the brain associated with specific behavioral features. To elucidate the mechanism of ASD, several ASD mouse models have been generated, by focusing on some of the ASD risk genes...

Multimodal imaging studies targeting preschoolers and low-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) patients are scarce. We applied machine learning classifiers to parameters from T1-weighted MRI and DTI data of 58 children with ASD (age 3-6 years) and 48 typically developing controls (TDC). Classification performance reached an accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of 88.8%, 93.0%, and 83.8%, respectively. The most prominent features were the cortical thickness of the right inferior occipital gyrus, mean diffusivity of the middle cerebellar peduncle, and nodal efficiency of the left posterior cingulate gyrus...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a combination of developmental anomalies that causes social and behavioral impairments, affecting around 2% of US children. Common symptoms include difficulties in communications, interactions, and behavioral disabilities. The onset of symptoms can start in early childhood, yet repeated visits to a pediatric specialist are needed before reaching a diagnosis. Still, this diagnosis is usually subjective, and scores can vary from one specialist to another. Previous literature suggests differences in brain development, environmental, and/or genetic factors play a role in developing autism, yet scientists still do not know exactly the pathology of this disorder...

BACKGROUND: Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) usually present overlapping symptoms. Abnormal white matter (WM) microstructure has been found in these disorders. Identification of common and unique neural abnormalities across NDDs could provide further insight into the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms. METHODS: We performed a voxel-based meta-analysis of whole-brain diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) studies in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other NDDs...

BACKGROUND: Identifying the brain bases for phenotypic heterogeneity in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) will advance understanding of its pathogenesis and improve its clinical management. METHODS: We compared Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) indices and connectome measures between 77 ASD and 88 Typically Developing (TD) control participants. We also assessed voxel-wise associations of DTI indices with measures of regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and N-acetylaspartate (NAA) to understand how tissue microstructure associates with cellular metabolism and neuronal density, respectively...

Mutations and deletions in the SHANK3 gene cause the major neurodevelopmental features of Phelan-McDermid syndrome (PMS), which is characterized by intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, and sensory hyporeactivity. SHANK3 encodes a key structural component of excitatory synapses important for synaptogenesis. Clinical assessments and limited brain imaging studies of patients with PMS have uncovered regional volume reductions and white matter thinning. While these impairments have been replicated ex vivo in pups of a rat model, brain structure has not been assessed in rats in vivo or in adults...

We propose a novel integrated framework that jointly models complementary information from resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) connectivity and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) tractography to extract biomarkers of brain connectivity predictive of behavior. Our framework couples a generative model of the connectomics data with a deep network that predicts behavioral scores. The generative component is a structurally-regularized Dynamic Dictionary Learning (sr-DDL) model that decomposes the dynamic rs-fMRI correlation matrices into a collection of shared basis networks and time varying subject-specific loadings...

BACKGROUND: Evidences suggesting the association between behavioral anomalies in autism and white matter (WM) microstructural alterations are increasing. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is widely used to infer tissue microstructure. However, due to its lack of specificity, the underlying pathology of reported differences in DTI measures in autism remains poorly understood. Herein, we applied neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI) to quantify and define more specific causes of WM microstructural changes associated with autism in adults...