Brain Size of Children Yields Clues to Autism
Study Shows Kids With Autism Have Faster Brain Growth Around Age 1
May 2, 2011 -- Children with autism tend to have larger brains than children without autism, a study suggests.
The study shows larger brains are the result of accelerated brain growth around the children’s first birthday.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina also report that the brain overgrowth in kids who develop autism occurs in the temporal lobe white matter of the brain.
This finding could lead to a better understanding of the genes that drive autism, which, in turn, could lead to earlier identification and treatment of the disorder, study researcher Joseph Piven, MD, tells WebMD.
There is no medical test to identify autism. The disorder is typically diagnosed at age 3 based on behavioral and developmental clues. But subtle signs of autism are often present long before this age.
Piven, who directs the University of North Carolina’s Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities, has been conducting brain-imaging studies to assess the role of brain size in autism for close to two decades.
His research team is now following high-risk children from infancy in an effort to identify patterns of brain development and behavior that predict autism.
Comparing Brain Sizes
The study, led by University of North Carolina assistant professor of psychiatry Heather Cody Hazlett, PhD, included children who had been diagnosed with autism by the age of 2.
Research involving these children, published in 2005 by the University of North Carolina research team, linked larger brain size at age 2 and slightly larger head circumferences started around the age of 1 to autism.
The brains of the 2-year-olds with autism were up to 10% larger than the 2-year-olds without the disorder.
In the new study, the researchers again performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the brains of 38 children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 21 children without autism. The children were between the ages of 4 and 5 at the time of the follow-up imaging.
The older children with ASD still showed enlargements in the region of the brain identified in the earlier imaging study, compared to children without autism. But their rate of brain growth for the two groups was similar, suggesting that the accelerated growth occurred before age 2.