12 Sep Association of Brain White Matter Structure With Autism Spectrum Disorder and ADHD
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr. Di Martino
Dr. Adriana Di Martino, MD
Associate Professor, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
NYU Langone Health
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: While there has been an increased awareness of the co-occurrence of symptoms of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in children with a primary diagnosis of ASD, only recently has there been an appreciation that a substantial proportion of children with ADHD may also have ASD traits. These symptom domains overlap pose a challenge for accurate recognition and targeted treatments, yet their underlying mechanisms have been unknown.
With more traditional diagnostic group comparisons we detected a significant influence of ASD on white matter organization, but our analyses of the severity of symptoms across individuals revealed an association between autistic traits and white matter organization, regardless of the individual’s diagnosis. These findings were mostly centered around the corpus callosum, a structure that enables communication between the left and right cerebral hemispheres.
MedicalResearch.com: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?
Response: There is still much work to be done, but this work supports the increasing importance of considering multiple dimensions of dysfunction when assessing children with neurodevelopmental conditions. This is the road towards developing more precise individualized interventions.
MedicalResearch.com: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?
Response: Answering this question requires a long conversation but deep phenotyping (i.e., characterization of multiple domains of functioning), using of large datasets and aiming towards reproducibility are among my top recommendations…
MedicalResearch.com: Thank you for your contribution to the MedicalResearch.com community.
Citation:Yuta Aoki, Yuliya N. Yoncheva, Bosi Chen, Tanmay Nath, Dillon Sharp, Mariana Lazar, Pablo Velasco, Michael P. Milham, Adriana Di Martino. Association of White Matter Structure With Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. JAMA Psychiatry, 2017; DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2017.2573
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Last Updated on September 12, 2017 by Marie Benz MD FAAD