Brain Plasticity of Autism in Response to Early Behavioral Intervention: A Multimodal MRI Study

Autism is a well-recognized neurodevelopmental disorder severely affecting the health of children. While the unclear neurobiological basis of autism and the lack of effective medication, the most commonly used approach for treatment is behavioral intervention. However, the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the intervention therapy remains incompletely understood. The current project aims to explore the impacts of different early behavioral intervention methods on brain plasticity of autism using multimodal MRI technique and provide guidelines for the intervention and treatment of autism by evaluating the efficiency of these methods.

Autism is a well-recognized neurodevelopmental disorder severely affecting the health of children. While the unclear neurobiological basis of autism and the lack of effective medication, the most commonly used approach for treatment is behavioral intervention. However, the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying the intervention therapy remains incompletely understood. The current project aims to explore the impacts of different early behavioral intervention methods on brain plasticity of autism using multimodal MRI technique and provide guidelines for the intervention and treatment of autism by evaluating the efficiency of these methods. Investigators first investigate longitudinal effect of behavioral intervention on brain structure and function in children with autism. In addition, investigators provide new biological indexes upon multimodal large-scale brain connectomes to evaluate the curative effect of intervention. Finally, investigators propose a prediction model of intervention effect based on multimodal multivariate pattern analysis methods. Furthermore, investigators expect to map the state-of-the-art biomarkers on multi-modal networks to provide a new interpretation of pathophysiological mechanisms of autism.

Brain structural and functional change under behavioral intervention at 6 months in children with autism

Longitudinal effect of behavioral intervention on brain structure and function in children with autism will be assessed by Voxel-based morphometry analysis for structural changes, as well as Regional homogeneity, Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation, etc, for functional changes.

First, classify autism individuals into effective treatment group and ineffective treatment group according to the intervention effect at 6 months. Second, conduct feature selection with Sparse optimization algorithms and cluster analysis on MRI data. Third, design optimized classifiers integrated support vector machines and Gaussian Naive Bayes classifiers.

Inclusion Criteria: Age range from 2 to 8 years old. Clinical DSM-IV diagnosis of autism. Exclusion Criteria: Subjects with other neurodevelopmental diseases. Subjects with contraindications to MRI.

Center for Information in BioMedicine, Key laboratory for NeuroInformation of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Guo X, Duan X, Suckling J, Wang J, Kang X, Chen H, Biswal BB, Cao J, He C, Xiao J, Huang X, Wang R, Han S, Fan YS, Guo J, Zhao J, Wu L, Chen H. Mapping Progressive Gray Matter Alterations in Early Childhood Autistic Brain. Cereb Cortex. 2021 Feb 5;31(3):1500-1510. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaa304.