Cortical and Subcortical Volumes correlation to Neuropsychological performance in Children with ASD
Poster No:
354
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Maria Baida1, Sana Vaziri1, Cristian Preciado1, Carly Demopoulos1, Yan Li1
Institutions:
1University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Introduction:
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects social interaction and communication abilities. Various changes in the cerebral cortex have been identified to be associated with ASD, focusing on cortical morphological metrics, such as cortical thickness, surface area, cortical volume, and cortical gyrification (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). Key brain regions involved in speech and language processing include the superior temporal gyrus (auditory cortex), precentral gyrus (motor cortex), Broca's area, Wernicke's area, angular gyrus, fusiform gyrus, insula, basal ganglia, and cerebellum. In this study, we performed structural volume analysis to investigate how cortical and subcortical volumes in the auditory, motor, and language regions relate to speech measures, such as articulation, rapid naming, and motor function.
Methods:
The study involved 66 children diagnosed with ASD and 27 typically developing children (TDC). Figure 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of the study population. Speech assessments included age-scaled scores from the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation Sounds-in-Words subtest (articulation), NEPSY-II Inhibition Naming Time (rapid naming), and the Diadochokinetic Period (DDK) for "Puh-Tuh-Kuh" repetitions, conducted following the procedures of the Oral Speech Motor Screening Exam-3rd Edition to evaluate speech motor function. MR data were collected on a 3T MR scanner (GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI). A T1-weighted sequence was acquired for tissue segmentation with the following parameters: TR = 6.95 ms, TE = 2.92 ms, TI = 1060 ms, slice thickness = 1 mm, field-of-view (FOV) = 256 mm, and matrix size = 256 × 256. The T1 images were visually inspected for motion artifacts. FreeSurfer image analysis suite, version 7.4.0, was used to conduct the semi-automated process of cortical reconstruction [7]. Segmentation quality was evaluated using Qoala-T software (Version 1.2.1), a supervised machine-learning tool employing random forest analysis (8). Images with Qoala-T scores under 30 were excluded, scores above 70 were deemed acceptable, whereas images scoring between 30 and 70 were further visually inspected to verify segmentation accuracy. This visual inspection followed the manual quality control guidelines (8). Images that failed to meet the quality standards were removed from the analysis. The segmented cortical and subcortical volumes were extracted for the regions corresponding to the Auditory, Motor, and Language cortex based on the Desikan-Killiany atlas [9]. The region characteristics for the Auditory, Motor, and Language cortex for segmentation cortical volume parameters extracted are shown in Figure 2. Multivariable linear regression models were utilized to examine the difference in cortical and subcortical volumes between the groups and investigate the relationship between cortical volumes and neuropsychological measures, with age adjusted.
Results:
There was no significant difference in age or sex between the ASD and TDC groups. No significant differences were found between ASD and TDC in the examined brain regions. Among the subjects with ASD, better speech motor function was associated with lower volumes of left accumbens (coef=-0.004, p=0.008), and lower right pallidum volume (coef=-0.002, p=0.008). Better rapid naming was associated with the higher volume of right caudate (coef=0.002, p=0.008), left caudate (coef=0.002, p=0.04), andright pallidum (coef=0.005, p=0.02). Smaller volume in right pars opercularis (coef=-0.008, p=0.02), right pars triangularis (coef=-0.007, p=0.02), and left pars triangularis (coef=-0.009, p=0.02) were associated with better performance on GFTA-3 Tot score.
Conclusions:
This study reveals that larger basal ganglia volumes correlate with improved speech motor speed and fluency, while smaller volumes in the right Broca area are associated with enhanced speech accuracy. These findings highlight structural variations linked to speech and language abilities in children with ASD.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Neurodevelopmental/ Early Life (eg. ADHD, autism) 1
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
Anatomical MRI 2
Keywords:
Autism
Segmentation
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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