Neuroimaging and Neurochemistry of Autism

Allogenic umbilical cord blood transplantation for a child with chromosomal abnormality: a case report

“…Previous studies about localized metabolism alteration in autistic spectrum disorders including GDD found no common regional abnormalities across cerebral blood flow or cerebral glucose metabolism [27]. However, consensus judgement suggests focal hypoperfused and hypometabolic areas in the thalamus, basal ganglia, parietal, temporal lobes, and cerebellum, and many of the areas are compatible with the present case [28,29]. According to a recent trial for autism patients with bone marrow stem cell, they also showed similar finding with this result with increased glucose metabolism in cerebellum [30].…”

Assessment of white matter integrity of autistic preschool children with diffusion weighted MR imaging

“…There is reduced volume of the white matter at voxel based morphometry [11][12][13][14][15][16][17], abnormalities of choline and glutamate of white matter at MR spectroscopy [18] and decreased connectivity at functional MR imaging of autistic children [19]. Studies using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), which assesses multiple aspects of molecular diffusion, have focused on parameters such as mean diffusivity (MD) and fractional anisotropy (FA).…”

Neuroimages in Autism

“…A large number of studies in children reliably reveal that ASD patient's exhibit reduced NAA levels in a wide number of cortical and subcortical brain regions. Consistently, reported areas with NAA reduction include global gray or matter; frontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, hippocampus-amygdala region, temporal and occipital lobes, thalamus, and cerebellum (for review see (Hyde et al 2010;Raznahan et al 2013;Anagnostou and Taylor 2011;Ipser et al 2012;Chugani 2012)). Decreased neuronal density would be the origin of disruptions in long-range fiber tracts, discussed in the next section, thus resulting in decreased NAA in both the grey and the corresponding white matter.…”

“…The dopamine transporter binding can be studied using 99m Tc-TRODAT-1 imaged by SPECT or 11 C-WIN-35,428 imaged with PET. Increase in the dopamine transporter binding has been reported throughout the whole brain in children, and in orbital frontal cortex in adults with autism (Chugani 2012).…”