TY  - INPR
A1  - Floris, Dorothea L.
A1  - Wolfers, Thomas
A1  - Zabihi, Mariam
A1  - Holz, Nathalie E.
A1  - Zwiers, Marcel P.
A1  - Charman, Tony
A1  - Tillmann, Julian
A1  - Ecker, Christine
A1  - Dell'Acqua, Flavio
A1  - Banaschewski, Tobias
A1  - Mößnang, Carolin Ulrike
A1  - Baron-Cohen, Simon
A1  - Holt, Rosemary
A1  - Durston, Sarah
A1  - Loth, Eva
A1  - Murphy, Declan G. M.
A1  - Marquand, Andre F.
A1  - Buitelaar, Jan K.
A1  - Beckmann, Christian F.
T1  - Atypical brain asymmetry in autism - a candidate for clinically meaningful stratification
T2  - bioRxiv
N2  - Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (henceforth ‘autism’) is a highly heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition with few effective treatments for core and associated features. To make progress we need to both identify and validate neural markers that help to parse heterogeneity to tailor therapies to specific neurobiological profiles. Atypical hemispheric lateralization is a stable feature across studies in autism, however its potential of lateralization as a neural stratification marker has not been widely examined.
Methods: In order to dissect heterogeneity in lateralization in autism, we used the large EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project dataset comprising 352 individuals with autism and 233 neurotypical (NT) controls as well as a replication dataset from ABIDE (513 autism, 691 NT) using a promising approach that moves beyond mean-group comparisons. We derived grey matter voxelwise laterality values for each subject and modelled individual deviations from the normative pattern of brain laterality across age using normative modeling.
Results: Results showed that individuals with autism had highly individualized patterns of both extreme right- and leftward deviations, particularly in language-, motor- and visuospatial regions, associated with symptom severity. Language delay (LD) explained most variance in extreme rightward patterns, whereas core autism symptom severity explained most variance in extreme leftward patterns. Follow-up analyses showed that a stepwise pattern emerged with individuals with autism with LD showing more pronounced rightward deviations than autism individuals without LD.
Conclusion: Our analyses corroborate the need for novel (dimensional) approaches to delineate the heterogeneous neuroanatomy in autism, and indicate atypical lateralization may constitute a neurophenotype for clinically meaningful stratification in autism.
Y1  - 2020
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/72717
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-727170
IS  - 2020.03.24.000349
ER  -