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Abstract #0777

Regional Specificity & Magnitude of Differences in DTI Metrics between Autistic & Typically Developing Children

Lindsay Walker1, 2, Marta Gozzi3, Audrey Thurm3, Babak Behseta3, Pooja Modi1, Rhoshel Lenroot4, Susan Swedo3, Carlo Pierpaoli1

1PPITS/STBB/NICHD, NIH, Bethesda, MD, United States; 2CNRM, USUHS, Bethesda, MD, United States; 3NIMH, NIH, Bethesda, MD, United States; 4University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) shows promise for studying potential structural abnormalities in the brains of autistic children. However, the regional distribution of DTI findings in the literature is inconsistent across studies. We use DTI to investigate potential structural differences between the brains of autistic children as compared to age and gender matched typically developing children using high quality DTI data, and measure the regional magnitude of differences in various DTI metrics. While DTI is promising, caution must be exercised in interpreting between-group differences due to the small magnitude of the changes.

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Keywords

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