BRAIN STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION IN DEVELOPMENTAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL DISORDERS

儿童时期的许多神经精神障碍可能反映出细微的偏差。 在大脑发育方面。通过采集和分析来自多个国家的磁共振图像 临床小组和健康对照组以相同的方式 能够解决具有特殊性的重要问题。在…的过程中 提供有效的控制对象我们已经获得了世界上最大的 筛查良好的健康儿童的最大脑MRI数据集 青少年。大脑结构大小的巨大变异性 强调需要大样本量和纵向研究设计， 这些都在进行中。 大脑正常发育的性幻觉模式可能有助于揭示 在发病年龄、患病率和症状方面的性别差异 大多数儿童神经精神障碍。例如，相对的 女性尾状核体积较大可能与 ADHD和Tourette‘s障碍的男性患病率高于女性 两者都与基底节大小减少有关。此外，仅限男性 青少年侧脑室容量的强劲增长可能与 青春期精神分裂症男性发病率较高。我们的新产品 图像分析技术现在允许我们分割白质、灰质 物质和脑脊液在脑部的MR图像上显示出健壮的 在我们的年龄范围内，白质随年龄增长，但灰质不随年龄增长 4至18岁。一项对正常读者的PET O15研究支持 “单一路径”的联结主义阅读模式，其中真实和 假词在共同的神经中被类似的机制处理 网络。阅读障碍患者与对照组在后双侧语言中的不同 区域，而不考虑任务的本地化价值。

Many neuropsychiatric disorders of childhood may reflect subtle deviations in brain development. By acquiring and analyzing MRI images from several clinical groups and healthy controls in an identical fashion we have been able to address important issues of specificity. In the process of providing valid control subjects we have acquired one of the world's largest cerebral MRI data sets of well-screened healthy children and adolescents. The enormous variability of brain structure sizes highlights the need for large sample sizes and longitudinal study designs, which are underway. Sexually dimoprhic patterns of normal brain development may shed light on sex differences in age of onset, prevalence, and symptomatology noted in most childhood neuropsychiatric disorders. For instance, the relatively larger size of the caudate nucleus in females may be related to the male-greater-than-female prevalence of ADHD and Tourette's disorder, which are both associated with decreased basal ganglia size. Also, the male-only robust adolescent increases in lateral ventricular volume may be related to the higher male incidence of adolescent onset schizophrenia. Our new image analysis technique now allows us to segment white matter, gray matter, and cerebral spinal fluid on brain MR images and reveals a robust increase with age in white matter, but not gray matter, for our age range of 4 to 18 years. A PET O15 study of normal readers supported a "single-route" connectionist model of reading in which both real and pseuodowords are processed by similar mechanisms in a common neural network. Dyslexics differ from controls in posterior bilateral language regions regardless of the localizing value of the task.