Chun-Wei Lan1, Kun-Hsien Chou2,
I-Yun Chen3, Ya-wei Cheng3, Jean Decety4,
Yang-Teng Fan3, Ching-Po Lin1,3
1Institute of Biomedical Imaging and
Radiological Sciences, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 2Institute
of Biomedical Engineering, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 3Institute
of Neuroscience, National Yang Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan; 4Departments
of Psychology and Psychiatry, The University of Chicago, Chicago, United
States
The
autism spectrum disorders (ASD), during childhood, undergoes precocious
growth, followed by maturation deceleration. But how the ASD brain changed
during adolescence is unclear. We enrolled 25 male adolescents with ASD and
25 controls for voxel-based morphometric analysis. Global brain volume
enlargement of ASD did not persist into adolescence. The right inferior
parietal lobule and posterior cingulate cortex, a role in social cognition,
had a significant interaction of age by group as indicated by an accelerated
age-related loss in the adolescents with ASD but an age-related gain in the
controls. The findings provided evidence of aberrant neurodevelopment in ASD.