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Using prenatal brain scans, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School (Boston) have been able to discover significant differences in brain structures around 25 weeks’ gestation among children later diagnosed with a autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and those without.
The study being presented at the American Anatomy Association’s annual meeting during the Experimental Biology meeting adds to growing evidence that autism begins early in development and suggests potential opportunities to identify autism earlier in life.
“Early detection means better treatment,” he says. Alps Ortugfirst author of the study.
“Our results suggest that increased volume of the insular lobe it may be a strong prenatal MRI biomarker that could predict the occurrence of ASD in the future.”
ASD is a complex disorder of neurodesarrollo which can cause challenges with communication, cognitive processing, emotional awareness, and perception. Its causes are unknown, but both genetic and environmental factors are thought to play a role. While early treatment has been shown to improve language and cognitive skills, current diagnostic tools can only identify the disorder at around 18 months of age.
To find out if brain scans taken prenatally could help identify signs of ASD, researchers retrospectively analyzed 39 fetal MRI brain scans taken at Boston Children’s Hospital. Nine of the children were subsequently diagnosed with ASD, 20 were neurotypical, and 10 did not have ASD but had other health conditions that were also seen in the children with ASD. Brain scans were obtained at 25 weeks’ gestation.
When the segmented brain regions were compared between the different groups, the greatest differences were found in the insular lobe of the cerebrum, which had a significantly higher volume in the ASD group compared to the other three control groups. The insula is a region deep in the brain that is thought to have a role in perceptual awareness, social behavior, and decision-making, among other functions.
The findings are in line with other recent studies that have reported changes in the insular cortex in adults with autism and suggest that these differences may start in the womb.
The researchers also saw that scans of the children with ASD showed a significantly larger amygdala and hippocampal commissure compared with children who had other health conditions but not ASD.
“Since many genetic and environmental factors could affect the onset of ASD starting in the fetal stages, it is ideal to identify the earliest signature of brain abnormalities in potential patients with autism,” says Ortug. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to semi-automatically segment brain regions prenatally in patients diagnosed with autism and compare different groups of controls.”
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