Child autism and other pervasive disorders: The relation of autistic psychopathology to selected brain structures
Abstract
The goal of the study was to examine the relation of basic symptoms of autism to selected brain structures. The studied sample consisted of 77 autistic patients (61 boys, 16 girls) aged 9.1 +/- 5.3 years.
The children were investigated by CARS observation scale, ADI-R structured interview, intelligence test, and structural MRI (1.5 Tesla). In MRI depict, both qualitative part (raw pathology), and quantitative part (planimetric measurement of brain-cortex width, the size of corpus callosum, amygdala, hippocampus, and nucleus caudatus) were assessed. 55 patients of the sample (79.7%) were mentally retarded.
The sum CARS score was 37.3 +/- 6.7 and did not correlate significantly with any dimension in MRI pictures. Some subtests of ADI-R questionnaire correlated significantly with size of corpus callosum, amygdala, hippocampus, and nucleus caudatus.
The results support the considerations about the participation of nucleus caudatus, hippocampus, corpus callosum, and amygdala in the pathogenesis of child autism