The effect of age on vertex-based measures of the grey-white matter tissue contrast in autism spectrum disorder.
Caroline Mann, Anke Bletsch, Derek Andrews and 4 others
PMID 30302187WHAT IT FOUND
In boys and young men with autism, the boundary between grey and white matter showed lower contrast, especially during childhood and early adolescence.
The difference was mainly in the white matter signal, not the grey matter signal.
Key findings
01Across seven brain clusters, grey-white matter contrast was lower in autism than controls, and no clusters showed higher contrast in autism.
02Where the study found age-related differences between groups, people with autism had the largest contrast reduction between 7 and 15 years, with little or no difference in early adulthood.
03The lower contrast was linked mainly to lower white matter signal just under the cortex, because grey matter signal did not differ between groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study compared different people at different ages, so it did not follow the same individuals over time. Age-related differences are inferred from a cross-sectional design, not directly observed within people. Only right-handed males with ASD and full-scale IQ above 70 were included, so the results do not show what happens in females, left-handed people, or people with intellectual disability. Some scans were excluded for image quality or surface reconstruction errors, reducing the analysed sample from 164 recruited participants to 153. The MRI method cannot clearly assign the measured signal to specific cortical layers, and limited image resolution may affect the contrast values. The study reports group-level brain differences, not individual diagnosis, communication ability, therapy response, or clinical decision-making.
Declared interests
Funded by the Medical Research Council and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. The provided text does not state author conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat these brain imaging differences as a clinical test or a reason to change therapy. The study compared groups cross-sectionally, included only right-handed males with ASD and full-scale IQ above 70, and did not measure speech, language, communication, or therapy outcomes.