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Anterior temporal lobe is crucial for phenotypical difficulties of Children with Autism
Poster Session B, Wednesday, September 30, 4:30 - 6:30 pm, Wangari Maathai
Wenhui Fan1, Qingyang Li2, Junhua Ding1, Fei Li2; 1Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2Xinhua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, China
Introduction Anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is a hub for semantic processing, integrating multimodal information, such as motor, visual, auditory and emotional input (Lambon Ralph et al., 2017). This neural model has been tested in healthy adults, dementia and stroke (Guo et al., 2013; Xiao et al., 2024). Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) features core symptoms related to social, emotional and language difficulties (Eigsti et al., 2011; Lord et al., 2020) and may provide additional evidence on how language and emotion interact from a developmental perspective. However, little is known about whether the ATL is important in ASD and how it aligned with the classical ATL model. In this study, we systematically examined the neural basis of phenotypic difficulties in ASD and the influence of age on these relationships. Methods A total of 987 children with ASD (825 males; age: 8.65±2.50 years) and 464 typically developing (TD) children (193 males; age: 10.81±3.48 years) were recruited from Xinhua Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University between 2015 and 2025. Phenotypic difficulties were assessed using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), the Word & Gesture section of the Communicative Development Inventories (CDI), and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Principal component analysis (PCA)-derived components summarized ASD phenotypic dimensions and served as indices for subsequent brain-phenotype analyses. All participants underwent high-resolution T1-weighted structural MRI scanning. Cortical thickness was derived from T1 images using FreeSurfer. Group differences in cortical thickness between ASD and TD children were examined. Regions showing significant differences were used as regions of interest (ROIs), and their signal values were extracted to examine the relationship between cortical thickness and phenotypic difficulties. Time-varying effect modeling (TVEM) was further used to explore the age-varying effects of the significant associations. Results The ASD group exhibited greater cortical thickness in bilateral ATLs. Increased thickness was observed in the left temporal pole (TP), superior temporal gyrus (STG), and inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), as well as the right TP, middle temporal gyrus (MTG), fusiform gyrus (FG) (vertex-wise p < 0.001; cluster-wise p < 0.03). PCA successfully extracted three components: PC1 reflected social functioning, PC2 reflected language ability, and PC3 reflected emotional–behavioral difficulties. Higher language difficulty was associated with greater thickness of multiple regions in the bilateral ATL (pFDR < 0.001). The strongest effect in the right MTG was observed at age 13 (p = 0.03). The strongest effect in the right TP (p = 0.003) and FG (p = 0.005) thickness peaked at age 19. Higher behavioral difficulty was only associated with lower thickness in the right ventral ATL (pFDR < 0.05). Correlation with the right FG’s effect was peaked at age 13 (p = 0.020), and correlation with the right TP’s effect was peak at age 10 (p < 0.001). Conclusions Consistent with the ATL model, language is supported by bilateral ATL, while integration of emotion and language information occurs only in right ventral ATL. These findings provide first ASD evidence for the ATL model from a developmental perspective, and may further inform clinical intervention for ASD.
Topic Areas: Language Development/Acquisition, Disorders: Developmental