Structural and functional MRI and autism

Aims:

To identify differences in autistic people, non-autistic people and siblings of autistic people, in terms of the structure and function of the brain.

Background:

It is now well established that there are structural and functional differences in the brains of autistic and non-autistic people, although large scale studies are needed to verify these. This is one of the aims of the LEAP study which is part of EU-AIMS and is being extended into AIMS2TRIALS. The Cambridge Family Study also tested siblings of autistic people to see if some of the differences exist in those who share 50% of their genes with an autistic person. The MRC-AIMS study tested autistic and non-autistic males and females to identify differences related to diagnosis and gender and their interaction.

Methods:

Structural and functional MRI, the former including both grey and white matter studies, and the latter including a range of social and non social tasks.

Results:

Results will appear on our website.

Importance:

These studies are important since autism is fundamentally a neurodevelopmental condition. Our studies include individuals at younger ages, to track these differences to their earliest onset.

Relevance:

This research is primarily to increase understanding of the causes of autism.

Selected Publications

Autistic traits, resting-state connectivity, and absolute pitch in professional musicians: shared and distinct neural features, Molecular Autism 10, 20 (2019), T Wenhart, RAI Bethlehem, S Baron-Cohen, E Altenmüller
Synaptic and transcriptionally downregulated genes are associated with cortical thickness differences in autism, Molecular Psychiatry 24, 103-1064 (2019), R Romero-Garcia, V Warrier, E T Bullmore, S Baron-Cohen, R A Bethlehem
10Kin1day: A Bottom-Up Neuroimaging Initiative, Frontiers in Neurology 10, 425 (2019), L H Scholtens, F Agosta, C Alloza, D Arango, B Auyeung, S Baron-Cohen, S Basaia, M J Benders, F Beyer, L Booij, K P Braun
Large-scale analyses of the relationship between sex, age and intelligence quotient heterogeneity and cortical morphometry in autism spectrum disorder, Molecular Psychiatry (2019), S A Bedford, M T M Park, G A Devenyi, S Tullo, J Germann, R Patel, E Anagnostou, S Baron-Cohen, E T Bullmore, L R Chura, M C Craig, C Ecker, D L Floris, R J Holt, R Lenroot, J P Lerch, M V Lombardo, D G M Murphy, A Raznahan, A N V Ruigrok, E Smith, M D Spencer, J Suckling, M J Taylor, A Thurm, MRC AIMS Consortium, M-C Lai, M M Chakravarty
Altered Connectivity Between Cerebellum, Visual, and Sensory-Motor Networks in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Results from the EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project, Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging 4, 260-270 (2018), M Oldehinkel, M Mennes, A Marquand, T Charman, J Tillmann, C Ecker, F Dell’Acqua, D Brandeis, T Banaschewski, S Baumeister, C Moessnang, S Baron-Cohen, R Holt, S Bolte, S Durston, S, P Kundu, M V Lombardo, W Spooren, E Loth, D G M Murphy, C F Beckman, J K Buitelaar, the EU-AIMS LEAP Group

Staff:

Funders:

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