Characterizing Subcortical Structural Heterogeneity in Autism
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Autism presents with significant phenotypic and neuroanatomical heterogeneity, and neuroimaging studies of the thalamus, globus pallidus and striatum in autism have produced inconsistent and contradictory results. These structures are critical mediators of functions known to be atypical in autism, including sensory gating and motor function. We examined both volumetric and fine-grained localized shape differences in autism using a large ( n =3145, 1045-1318 after strict quality control), cross-sectional dataset of T1-weighted structural MRI scans from 32 sites, including both males and females (assigned-at-birth). We investigated three potentially important sources of neuroanatomical heterogeneity: sex, age, and intelligence quotient (IQ), using a meta-analytic technique after strict quality control to minimize non-biological sources of variation. We observed no volumetric differences in the thalamus, globus pallidus, or striatum in autism. Rather, we identified a variety of localized shape differences in all three structures. Including age, but not sex or IQ, in the statistical model improved the fit for both the pallidum and striatum, but not for the thalamus. Age-centered shape analysis indicated a variety of age-dependent regional differences. Overall, our findings help confirm that the neurodevelopment of the striatum, globus pallidus and thalamus are atypical in autism, in a subtle location-dependent manner that is not reflected in overall structure volumes, and that is highly non-uniform across the lifespan.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".