White Matter Microstructure is Associated with Auditory and Tactile Processing in Children with and without Sensory Processing Disorder

Abstract

Sensory processing disorders (SPDs) affect up to 16% of school-aged children, and contribute to cognitive and behavioral deficits impacting affected individuals and their families. While sensory processing differences are now widely recognized in children with autism, children with sensory-based dysfunction who do not meet autism criteria based on social communication deficits remain virtually unstudied. In a previous pilot diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study, we demonstrated that boys with SPD have altered white matter microstructure primarily affecting the posterior cerebral tracts, which subserve sensory processing and integration. This disrupted microstructural integrity, measured as reduced white matter fractional anisotropy (FA), correlated with parent report measures of atypical sensory behavior. In this present study, we investigate white matter microstructure as it relates to tactile and auditory function in depth with a larger, mixed-gender cohort of children 8–12 years of age. We continue to find robust alterations of posterior white matter microstructure in children with SPD relative to typically developing children (TDC), along with more spatially distributed alterations. We find strong correlations of FA with both parent report and direct measures of tactile and auditory processing across children, with the direct assessment measures of tactile and auditory processing showing a stronger and more continuous mapping to the underlying white matter integrity than the corresponding parent report measures. Based on these findings of microstructure as a neural correlate of sensory processing ability, diffusion MRI merits further investigation as a tool to find biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis and treatment response in children with SPD. To our knowledge, this work is the first to demonstrate associations of directly measured tactile and non-linguistic auditory function with white matter microstructural integrity – not just in children with SPD, but also in TDC.

A pilot study to determine the feasibility of enhancing cognitive abilities in children with sensory processing dysfunction

“…To varying degrees, all children with SPD struggle to properly modulate incoming sensory information, making it difficult to function in the same way as their unaffected peers [1,41–43]. The observed behavioral and neural findings support the idea that a subset of the SPD population face greater cognitive control deficiencies compared to TDC, which acts as an additional impediment in their daily lives.…”

Gray matter volumes of early sensory regions are associated with individual differences in sensory processing

“…These modalities contain 10, 11, 13, 8, 8, and 10 items, respectively. Previous studies have demonstrated relationships between brain morphology and modality-specific sensory behaviors measured by caregiver report questionnaires or structured assessments [Chang et al, 2014[Chang et al, , 2016Owen et al, 2013;Pryweller et al, 2014] as well as how to evaluate modality-specific sensory processing using the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile [Demopoulos et al, 2015]. Based on these findings, the present study summed the items within each modality to generate six modalityspecific subscales for the visual, auditory, touch, taste/ smell, movement, and activity level modalities.…”

Sensory Over-Responsivity: Parent Report, Direct Assessment Measures, and Neural Architecture

“…We conjectured that a sensory-first phenotype, in this case AOR, allows for a more parsimonious identification of key neural tracts. Indeed, in our previous work based on parent report and a broad inclusion criteria for sensory processing dysfunction, we found decreased FA in children with SPD in the posterior body and isthmus of the corpus callosum, the left posterior thalamic radiations (PTR), left PCR, and the posterior aspect of the left SLF [27]. Here, for children with AOR, the PCR, CGC, and SLF tracts showed decreased FA.…”

“…For structural Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) analysis, we included 39 boys from UCSF who successfully completed direct sensory assessment and neuroimaging assessment (ASD, n=13 (age 11 years +/− 2), SPD, n=8 (age 11 years +/− 1) and TDC, n=18 (age 12 years +/− 1)). This cohort has been previously described in Chang et al, 2016 [27]. Due to a small sample size in the tactile domain, we constrained the DTI analysis to the auditory domain.…”

“…Prior work has begun to characterize the neural underpinnings of sensory processing differences in children with ASD, SPD, and ADHD [25]–[28]. Chang et al (2016) reported robust alterations of posterior white matter microstructure in children with broadly defined SPD relative to typically developing children (TDC) [27]. This investigation found strong correlations between the fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of microstructural integrity, with parent report and direct assessment measures of tactile and auditory discrimination across all children.…”