• Woo Young Im, Ji Hye Ha, Eun Joo Kim, Keun-Ah Cheon, Jaeil Cho, and Dong-Ho Song.
• Department of Psychiatry and Myunggok Medical Research Institute, Konyang University College of Medicine, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
• Psychiat Invest. 2018 Mar 1; 15 (3): 292-299.

ObjectiveIt is known that many of the cognitive and social deficits associated with autism can arise from abnormal functional connectivity between brain networks. This aberrant functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) can be explained by impaired integrity of white matter tracts that link distant regions of the networks.MethodsWe investigated white matter in 9 children with high-function autism (HFA) compared to 13 typically developing controls using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The aim of this research is to provide supporting evidence for abnormalities in neural connectivity as an underlying pathophysiology of the main characteristics of ASD.ResultsWe found impairment of neural connectivity, mainly in association fiber tracts as evidenced by decreased fractional anisotropy (FA), the index of white matter integrity, of these tracts. Among them, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF) had a significant relationship with ADI-R score. The inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) and superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) also showed decreased FA. Decreased FA of ILF and SLF had negative correlations with scores of social interaction.ConclusionThese findings suggest that widespread abnormalities in association fiber tracts may contribute to both core and associated symptoms of ASD.

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