20 octobre 2013

Increased Coherence of White Matter Fiber Tract Organization in Adults with Asperger Syndrome: A Diffusion Tensor Imaging Study

Traduction partielle: G.M.

Autism Res. 2013 Oct 2. doi: 10.1002/aur.1332.

Une plus grande cohérence de l'organisation des fibres la matière blanche chez les adultes avec un syndrome d'Asperger : une étude d'imagerie du tenseur de diffusion

Source

Brain and Mind Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland.

Abstract

To investigate whether there are global white matter (WM) differences between autistic and healthy adults, we performed diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in 14 male adults with Asperger syndrome (AS) and 19 gender-, age-, and intelligence quotient-matched controls. 
We focused on individuals with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD), AS, to decrease heterogeneity caused by large variation in the cognitive profile. Previous DTI studies of ASD have mainly focused on finding local changes in fractional anisotropy (FA) and mean diffusivity (MD), two indexes used to characterize microstructural properties of WM. Although the local or voxel-based approaches may be able to provide detailed information in terms of location of the observed differences, such results are known to be highly sensitive to partial volume effects, registration errors, or placement of the regions of interest. Therefore, we performed global histogram analyses of (a) whole-brain tractography results and (b) skeletonized WM masks. In addition to the FA and MD, the planar diffusion coefficient (CP) was computed as it can provide more specific information of the complexity of the neural structure. 

Notre principale conclusion indiquait que les adultes avec de SA avaient des valeurs d'anisotropie fractionnelle moyennes plus élevées que les témoins.  
Une structure neurale moins complexe chez les adultes avec SA auraient pu expliquer les résultats, mais aucune différence significative n'a été trouvée dans le coefficient de diffusion plan ( planar diffusion coefficient :CP)

Nos résultats suggèrent qu'il existe des anomalies globales dans le tissu de matière blanche des adultes avec SA.

PMID: 24089369

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