Williams syndrome-specific neuroanatomical profile and its associations with behavioral features

Autor: Chun Chieh Fan, Timothy T. Brown, Hauke Bartsch, Joshua M. Kuperman, Donald J. Hagler, Jr, Andrew Schork, Yvonne Searcy, Ursula Bellugi, Eric Halgren, Anders M. Dale
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2017
Předmět:
Zdroj: NeuroImage: Clinical, Vol 15, Iss , Pp 343-347 (2017)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2213-1582
DOI: 10.1016/j.nicl.2017.05.011
Popis: Williams Syndrome (WS) is a rare genetic disorder with unique behavioral features. Yet the rareness of WS has limited the number and type of studies that can be conducted in which inferences are made about how neuroanatomical abnormalities mediate behaviors. In this study, we extracted a WS-specific neuroanatomical profile from structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements and tested its association with behavioral features of WS. Using a WS adult cohort (22 WS, 16 healthy controls), we modeled a sparse representation of a WS-specific neuroanatomical profile. The predictive performances are robust within the training cohort (10-fold cross-validation, AUC=1.0) and accurately identify all WS individuals in an independent child WS cohort (seven WS, 59 children with diverse developmental status, AUC=1.0). The WS-specific neuroanatomical profile includes measurements in the orbitofrontal cortex, superior parietal cortex, Sylvian fissures, and basal ganglia, and variability within these areas related to the underlying size of hemizygous deletion in patients with partial deletions. The profile intensity mediated the overall cognitive impairment as well as personality features related to hypersociability. Our results imply that the unique behaviors in WS were mediated through the constellation of abnormalities in cortical-subcortical circuitry consistent in child WS and adult WS. The robustness of the derived WS-specific neuroanatomical profile also demonstrates the potential utility of our approach in both clinical and research applications. Keywords: Williams Syndrome, Neuroanatomy, Social cognition, Magnetic resonance imaging
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