ans aberrant neurodevelopment of the social cognition network in adolescents with autism spectrum disordersans异常的神经发育的青少年社会认知网络孤独症谱系障碍.pdfVIP

ANS: Aberrant Neurodevelopment of the Social Cognition Network in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders 1,2 1 1 1 Yawei Cheng , Kun-Hsien Chou , Yang-Teng Fan , Ching-Po Lin * 1 Institute of Neuroscience, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan, 2 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, National Yang-Ming University Hospital, Yilan, Taiwan Abstract Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by aberrant neurodevelopment. Although the ASD brain undergoes precocious growth followed by decelerated maturation during early postnatal period of childhood, the neuroimaging approach has not been empirically applied to investigate how the ASD brain develops during adolescence. Methodology/Principal Findings: We enrolled 25 male adolescents with high functioning ASD and 25 typically developing controls for voxel-based morphometric analysis of structural magnetic resonance image. Results indicate that there is an imbalance of regional gray matter volumes and concentrations along with no global brain enlargement in adolescents with high functioning ASD relative to controls. Notably, the right inferior parietal lobule, a role in social cognition, have a significant interaction of age by groups as indicated by absence of an age-related gain of regional gray matter volume and concentration for neurodevelopmental maturation during adolescence. Conclusions/Significance: The findings indicate the neural correlates of social cognition exhibits aberrant neurodevelop- ment during adolescence in ASD, which may cast some light on the brain growth dysregulation hypothesis. The period of abnormal brain growth during adolescence may be characteristic of ASD. Age effects must be taken into account while