The psychiatry team of the clinical research UNIACT Lab at NeuroSpin, in collaboration with the Asperger expert centers from Créteil and Robert Debré (Paris), and the Roche Institute for Translational Medicine, have published a study comparing with multimodal MRI two very frequent psychiatric conditions: high-functioning autism (also known as Asperger's syndrom) and schizophrenia.

Indeed, relationships between those two conditions are poorly known; they not only share common risk environmental and genetic risk factors but also clinical dimensions such as social impairment. They differ on other aspects such as cognitive performance. In this study, both groups of patients had shared alterations of white matter long range fronto-occipital structural connectivity (implicated in social cognition), whereas diametrically opposed changes in the prefrontal cortex gray matter were found: volume increases in subjects suffering from autism and decreases in patients with schizophrenia. This gray matter pattern may be associated with the differential cognitive features of these conditions. 

These results suggest the coexistence of shared and opposite liability factors in those two diseases.

This work has been published in Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (Katz et al, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 2016).

Contact : Dr Josselin Houenou, Centre Expert Asperger Créteil, INSERM U955 Equipe 15 et plate-forme de neuroimagerie NeuroSpin