Advanced imaging techniques may reveal more precise pictures of how of the brain’s regions communicate with one another. How much of the neurodevelopmental riddle of autism lies in these tracts?
New techniques to scan the brain can produce exquisitely detailed views of white matter, which contains the long cellular fibers that connect neurons. Many of the advances are emerging from the Human Connectome Project, a five-year push to map the brain’s wiring.
Researchers should be cautious about interpreting the results of studies that rely on diffusion tensor imaging, says Carlo Pierpaoli.
Autism may result from reduced anatomical connectivity and functional connectivity between the frontal cortex and more posterior areas of the brain, say Marcel Adam Just and Timothy Keller.
Connections between neighboring groups of brain cells are weaker in individuals with autism than in controls, according to a report published 14 January in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers can share and compare brain-imaging data on the UCLA Multimodal Connectivity Database, described in the 28 November Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. The resource builds connectivity matrices, which estimate the strength of connections between regions of the brain.
The first wave of data from the Human Connectome Project, a five-year $30 million effort to map the structure of the human brain, is now freely available, researchers announced at the 2012 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in New Orleans.
MET, a leading candidate gene for autism risk, influences the strength of connections between brain regions involved in social behaviors, and this effect is especially prominent in people with the disorder. The findings are from a large study using several imaging techniques, published 6 September in Neuron.
Abnormalities in the connections between language-related brain regions are similar in people with autism and those with tuberous sclerosis, a genetic disorder characterized by benign tumors throughout the brain and body, according to a paper published 1 June in Cerebral Cortex.
The bundles of nerve fibers that connect two regions important for language are abnormal in the brains of children with autism, according to a study published 5 April in the American Journal of Neuroradiology.