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Review
. 2023 Sep-Oct;14(5):585-604.
doi: 10.32598/bcn.2021.1774.3. Epub 2023 Sep 1.

Examining the Dominant Presence of Brain Grey Matter in Autism During Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Seyed Amir Hossein Batouli  1   2 , Foroogh Razavi  2 , Minoo Sisakhti  2   3 , Zeinab Oghabian  2 , Haady Ahmadzade  1   2 , Mehdi Tehrani Doost  1   4
Affiliations
Review

Examining the Dominant Presence of Brain Grey Matter in Autism During Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Seyed Amir Hossein Batouli et al. Basic Clin Neurosci. 2023 Sep-Oct.

Abstract

Introduction: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with symptoms appearing from early childhood. Behavioral modifications, special education, and medicines are used to treat ASD; however, the effectiveness of the treatments depends on early diagnosis of the disorder. The primary approach in diagnosing ASD is based on clinical interviews and valid scales. Still, methods based on brain imaging could also be possible diagnostic biomarkers for ASD.

Methods: To identify the amount of information the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals on ASD, we reviewed 292 task-based fMRI studies on ASD individuals. This study is part of a systematic review with the registration number CRD42017070975.

Results: We observed that face perception, language, attention, and social processing tasks were mainly studied in ASD. In addition, 73 brain regions, nearly 83% of brain grey matter, showed an altered activation between the ASD and normal individuals during these four tasks, either in a lower or a higher activation.

Conclusion: Using imaging methods, such as fMRI, to diagnose and predict ASD is a great objective; research similar to the present study could be the initial step.

Keywords: Autism; Examinations and diagnoses; Functional magnetic resonance imaging.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared no conflict of interest..

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Illustration of the brain areas with an altered activation between the autism spectrum disorder and normal individuals in the four cognitive functions of interest Notes: Colors are proportional to the number of reports for each structure. Warm and cool colors respectively show the brain areas with a higher or lower activation in the autism spectrum disorder compared to normal individuals.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
The overlap of the brain areas with an altered activation between the autism spectrum disorder and normal individuals in the four cognitive functions of interest with the grey matter tissue of the brain Notes: a) The combination of the maps of the four cognitive functions, b) Social tasks-low, c) Social tasks-high, d) Face processing-low, e) Face processing-high, f) Language tasks-low, g) language tasks-high, h) Attention tasks-low, i) attention-tasks-high The percentages show each map’s overlap with the brain’s grey matter tissue.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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