Study on autistic children finds higher neuron density in their brain's amygdala

Researchers from the University of Rochester, US, also found in autistic people a lower neuron density in the cerebral cortex, which is important for tasks such as memory, learning and reasoning.

New Delhi: Autistic children, known to have trouble with social skills, have been found to have a higher density of neurons in amygdala -- the area responsible for emotions, according to a new study.

It is, however, not clear from the study if a higher density of neurons in the amygdala was directly responsible for causing impaired social skills.

Previous studies have linked an affected ability in autistic people to process faces with a lower neuron density in brain regions involved in the task.

Researchers from the University of Rochester, US, also found in autistic people a lower neuron density in cerebral cortex, which is important for tasks such as memory, learning and reasoning.

For the study, published in the journal Autism Research, the researchers analysed MRI brain scans of over 11,800 children aged 9-11 years, of which 142 were on the spectrum.

The scans of children having autism were compared with children of two categories -- those without any neurodevelopmental condition and those diagnosed with ADHD and anxiety.

The results were the same, suggesting that these differences are specific to autism, the researchers said.

"People with a diagnosis of autism often have other things they have to deal with, such as anxiety, depression, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). But these findings mean we now have a new set of measurements that have shown unique promise in characterising individuals with autism," study author Zachary Christensen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Rochester, said.

Reliably describing these unique deviations in the neuron structure of autistic children opens a lot of opportunities to understand how the condition develops, and these measures can potentially be used in diagnosis and therapy, Christensen said.

The brain imaging data used for analysis was taken from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, which began in 2015 and tracks brain development and mental health of children and adolescents across the US.