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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on March 20, 2008
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn031
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© 2008 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging of Frontal Lobe in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Senthil K. Sundaram1,2, Ajay Kumar1,2, Malek I. Makki2,3, Michael E. Behen1,2, Harry T. Chugani1,2,3 and Diane C. Chugani1,3

1 Carman and Ann Adams Department of Pediatrics, 2 Departments of Neurology, 3 Radiology, Children's Hospital of Michigan, Detroit Medical Center, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, 48202, USA

Address correspondence to Senthil K. Sundaram, MD, PET Center, Children's Hospital of Michigan, 3901 Beaubien Blvd, Detroit, MI 48201, USA. Email: ssundaram{at}pet.wayne.edu.

To investigate frontal lobe white matter in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), we performed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 50 ASD children (mean age: 57.5 ± 29.2 months, 43 males) and 16 typically developing children (mean age: 82.1 ± 41.4 months, 11 males). The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) was significantly higher for whole frontal lobe (P = 0.011), long (P < 0.001) and short range (P = 0.0126) association fibers in ASD group. There was a trend toward statistical significance in the fractional anisotropy (FA) of whole frontal lobe fibers (P = 0.11). FA was significantly lower in ASD group for short range fibers (P = 0.0031) but not for long range fibers (P = not significant [NS]). There was no between-group difference in the number of frontal lobe fibers (short and long) (P = NS). The fiber length distribution was significantly more positively skewed in the normal population than in the ASD group (P < 0.001). The long range association fibers of frontal lobe were significantly longer in ASD group (P = 0.026 for both left and right hemispheres). Abnormal frontal FA and ADC may be due to white matter organization abnormalities in ASD. Lack of evidence for excessive short range connectivity in ASD in this study may need to be re-examined with future advances in DTI technology.

Key Words: apparent diffusion coefficient • fractional anisotropy • magnetic resonance imaging • short range connectivity • tractography


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