Language impairment is comorbid in most children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) but its neural basis is poorly understood. Using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the present study provides the whole-brain comparison of both volume- and surface-based characteristics between groups of children with and without ASD and investigates the relationships between these characteristics in language-related areas and the language abilities of children with ASD measured with standardized tools. A total of 36 school-aged children participated in the study: 18 children with ASD and 18 age- and sex-matched typically developing controls. The results revealed that multiple regions differed between groups of children in gray matter volume, gray matter thickness, gyrification, and cortical complexity (fractal dimension). White matter volume and sulcus depth did not differ between groups of children in any region. Importantly, gray matter thickness and gyrification of language-related areas were related to language functioning in children with ASD. Thus, the results of the present study shed some light on the structural brain abnormalities associated with language impairment in ASD.
Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by social interaction and communication de cits, repetitive behavior and often by co-occurring conditions such as language and non-verbal IQ development delays. Previous studies reported that those behavioral abnormalities can be associated with corpus callosum organization. However, little is known about the speci c differences in white matter structure of the corpus callosum parts in children with ASD and TD peers and their relationships to core and comorbid symptoms of ASD. The aim of the study was to investigate the volumetric and microstructural characteristics of the corpus callosum parts crucially involved in social, language, and non-verbal IQ behavior in primary-school-aged children with ASD and to assess the relationships between these characteristics and behavioral measures.Method: 38 children (19 with ASD, 19 typically developing (TD)) were scanned using diffusion-weighted MRI and behaviorally assessed. The tractography of the corpus callosum parts were performed using Quantitative Imaging Toolkit software; diffusivity and volumetric measurements were extracted and analyzed.Results: In the ASD group, fractional anisotropy (FA) was decreased across the supplementary motor area and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, axial diffusivity (AD) was reduced across each of the corpus callosum parts in comparison to the TD group. Importantly, the AD decrease was related to worse language abilities and more severe autistic traits in individuals with ASD.Conclusions: The microstructure of the corpus callosum parts differs between children with and without ASD. Abnormalities in white matter organization of the corpus callosum parts are associated with core and comorbid symptoms of ASD.
Discourse Diversity Database (3D) is a corpus designed for clinical linguistics research. It consists of oral speech samples of three different genres: picture-elicited narratives, personal stories, and picture-based instructions. The sub-sections of 3D include recordings by Russian speakers from three independent groups: people with brain tumors before and after tumor removal, people with schizophrenia, and neurologically healthy individuals. This article is devoted to the description of the data collection, the annotation scheme, and the specific characteristics of each sub-section of the corpus.
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