Studies of magnetic resonance images have revealed morphological disorders of the brainstem and cerebellum in autistic children and adults. When we studied development of the brainstem and cerebellum in autistic patients, we found that although the brainstem and cerebellum significantly increased in size with age in both autistic patients and controls, these structures were significantly smaller in autistic patients than in controls. The speed of development of the pons, the cerebellar vermis I-V and the cerebellar vermis VI-VII was significantly more rapid in autistic patients than in the controls. However, the speed of development of the other brain structures in the posterior fossa did not differ between autistic patients and controls. The regression intercepts of the brainstem and cerebellum as well as those of their components were significantly smaller in autistic patients than in controls. Results suggest that brainstem and vermian abnormalities in autism were due to an early insult and hypoplasia rather than to a progressive degenerative process.
We performed volume-selective proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) of the brain with a 1.5 T magnet in 28 patients with autism, and compared the results with those from 28 age-matched patients with unclassified mental retardation and 25 age-matched healthy children. Peaks for N-acetylaspartate, choline and creatine, but not lactate, were observed in each group on 1H-MRS. The N-acetylaspartate/choline ratio was lower in patients with mental retardation than in patients with autism and controls (P = .05, respectively). However, there were no differences in the N-acetylaspartate/ choline ratios between patients with autism and controls, and the N-acetylaspartate/creatine and choline/creatine ratios did not differ among the three groups. These results suggest that N-acetylaspartate is decreased in patients with mental retardation and that a disorder or dysfunction of neurons in the brain exists. There also appear to be differences in the brain lesions or dysfunctions found in patients with autism and mental retardation.
A dynamical approach is developed to predict the πN scattering amplitudes starting with the constituent quark models. The first step is to apply a variational method to solve the three-quark bound state problem. The resulting wave functions are used to calculate the N * → πN, ηN, π∆ vertex functions by assuming that the π and η mesons couple directly to quarks. These vertex functions and the predicted baryon bare masses then define a Hamiltonian for πN reactions. We apply a unitary transformation method to derive from the constructed Hamiltonian a multi-channel and multi-resonance reaction model for predicting the πN scattering amplitudes up to W = 2 GeV. With the parameters constrained by the ∆(1232) excitation, we have examined the extent to which the πN scattering in S 11 channel can be described by the constituent quark models based on the one-gluon-exchange or one-meson-exchange mechanisms. It is found that the data seem to favor the spin-spin interaction due to one-meson-exchange and the tensor interaction due to one-gluon-exchange. A phenomenological quark-quark potential has been constructed to reproduce the S 11 amplitude.
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