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The correlation between brain structure characteristics and emotion regulation ability in children at high risk of autism spectrum disorder

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Abstract

As indicated by longitudinal observation, autism has difficulty controlling emotions to a certain extent in early childhood, and most children's emotional and behavioral problems are further aggravated with the growth of age. This study aimed at exploring the correlation between white matter and white matter fiber bundle connectivity characteristics and their emotional regulation ability in children with autism using machine learning methods, which can lay an empirical basis for early clinical intervention of autism. Fifty-five high risk of autism spectrum disorder (HR-ASD) children and 52 typical development (TD) children were selected to complete the skull 3D-T1 structure and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The emotional regulation ability of the two groups was compared using the still-face paradigm (SFP). The classification and regression models of white matter characteristics and white matter fiber bundle connections of emotion regulation ability in the HR-ASD group were built based on the machine learning method. The volume of the right amygdala (R2 = 0.245) and the volume of the right hippocampus (R2 = 0.197) affected constructive emotion regulation strategies. FA (R2 = 0.32) and MD (R2 = 0.34) had the predictive effect on self-stimulating behaviour. White matter fiber bundle connection predicted constructive regulation strategies (positive edging R2 = 0.333, negative edging R2 = 0.334) and mother-seeking behaviors (positive edging R2 = 0.667, negative edging R2 = 0.363). The emotional regulation ability of HR-ASD children is significantly correlated with the connections of multiple white matter fiber bundles, which is a potential neuro-biomarker of emotional regulation ability.

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Data availability

The datasets used and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the participants in this study. This study is based on the first author’s doctoral study project.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC1306200), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81771478), the Project of Nanjing Rehabilitation Medical Center in JiangSu Province, China (2020), and the “Special Disease Cohort” Research Project of Nanjing Medical University (NMUC2018010A).

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  1. Child Mental Health Research Center, The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China

    Ning Ding, Linyan Fu, Lu Qian, Bei Sun, Chunyan Li, Huiyun Gao, Tianyu Lei & Xiaoyan Ke

  2. Qingdao Women and Children’ s Hospital, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266011, China

    Ning Ding

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XK and ND designed the study and performed the experiments; LF, LQ and BS also performed the experiments; ND analysed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Ding, N., Fu, L., Qian, L. et al. The correlation between brain structure characteristics and emotion regulation ability in children at high risk of autism spectrum disorder. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-024-02369-y

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