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Brain Advance Access originally published online on March 10, 2008
Brain 2008 131(4):987-999; doi:10.1093/brain/awn033
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© The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Neurons in the fusiform gyrus are fewer and smaller in autism

Imke A. J. van Kooten1,2,3, Saskia J. M. C. Palmen3, Patricia von Cappeln4, Harry W. M. Steinbusch1,2, Hubert Korr4, Helmut Heinsen5, Patrick R. Hof6, Herman van Engeland3 and Christoph Schmitz1,2

1Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Maastricht University, 2European Graduate School of Neuroscience (EURON), Maastricht, 3Rudolph Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands, 4Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, 5Morphological Brain Research Unit, University of Wuerzburg, Wuerzburg, Germany and 6Department of Neuroscience, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA

Correspondence to: Dr Christoph Schmitz, Department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology, Division of Cellular Neuroscience, Maastricht University, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands E-mail: c.schmitz{at}np.unimaas.nl

Abnormalities in face perception are a core feature of social disabilities in autism. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies showed that patients with autism could perform face perception tasks. However, the fusiform gyrus (FG) and other cortical regions supporting face processing in controls are hypoactive in patients with autism. The neurobiological basis of this phenomenon is unknown. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the FG shows neuropathological alterations in autism, namely alterations in neuron density, total neuron number and mean perikaryal volume. We investigated the FG (analysing separately layers II, III, IV, V and VI), in seven post-mortem brains from patients with autism and 10 controls for volume, neuron density, total neuron number and mean perikaryal volume with high-precision design-based stereology. To determine whether these results were specific for the FG, the same analyses were also performed in the primary visual cortex and in the cortical grey matter as a whole. Compared to controls, patients with autism showed significant reductions in neuron densities in layer III, total neuron numbers in layers III, V and VI, and mean perikaryal volumes of neurons in layers V and VI in the FG. None of these alterations were found in the primary visual cortex or in the whole cerebral cortex. Although based on a relatively small sample of post-mortem brains from patients with autism and controls, the results of the present study may provide important insight about the cellular basis of abnormalities in face perception in autism.

Key Words: fusiform gyrus; design-based stereology; autism

Abbreviations: AMG, amygdala; CGM, cortical grey matter; FFA, fusiform face area; FG, fusiform gyrus; fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging; IFG, inferior frontal gyrus; IOG, inferior occipital gyrus; KS, Kolmogorov–Smirnov; OFC, orbitofrontal cortex; STG, superior temporal gyrus

Received September 17, 2007. Revised February 7, 2008. Accepted February 13, 2008.


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