Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder which can result from a range of observed symptoms pertaining to social, emotional, and processing difficulties especially regarding communication of their own feelings, opinions, and thoughts with others. Although a diagnosis received by 1 in 68 children in the United States, a cause for autism is still unknown. Large-scale archiving and processing of MRI data are necessary for understanding the complexity of brain development and pathology of those with ASD. One of the challenges of the ASD study is its heterogenetic clinical symptoms with various comorbid disorders. Exploring specific early and late MRI-based signs of ASD and examining individual differences between the developmental trajectory of typical development and development in ASD can be important to identify biology-based subgroups of ASD. Our preliminary results are suggestive of increased early and abnormal brain developmental events in ASD compared to controls, followed by an absence of proper development. Our preliminary archiving also indicated that many patients diagnosed as ASD (typically when they were 3 or 4 years old) had been examined multiple times before that age (i.e. 0-3 years old). Retrospectively collecting such unique, innovative datasets, this proposal will use cutting-edge morphological and connectivity-based MR measurements with innovative data processing techniques in developing populations ranging from newborn to young adult ages. In addition to anatomic, morphological evaluation of in vivo MRI, we will examine fiber pathways of the brain in vivo and ex vivo. Our preliminary observations are partly consistent with the disrupted hyper connectivity of ASD reported in the literature. It is critical to further confirm the results with increased numbers of specimens and in vivo data to find a way to translate our ex vivo technique to clinical settings. We have much experience in the identification of various types of brain pathologies using our ex vivo MRI techniques, such as imaging of detailed cortical layer structures and unmyelinated fiber pathways, with histological confirmation.
The primary goal of the proposed research is to explore brain MRI-based morphometric, structural signs in patients with ASD, ranging from newborn to young adult ages, as well as to explore potential abnormalities of fiber pathways in the brain with ASD. The direction of the current project has considerable potential to identify under-developed or aberrant brain regions/pathways in ASD, and has potential towards the identification and characterization of other neurodevelopmental disorders as a deviation from expected maturation patterns distributed across the brain.
