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.