Neil Woodward, Ph.D., and Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., Assistant Professors of Psychiatry, served as co-authors on a paper titled "Brain structure in autism: a voxel-based morphometry analysis of the Autism Brain Imaging Database Exchange (ABIDE)," published in the March 2016 issue of the journal Brain Imaging Behavior.
Woodward and Cascio's study looked at brain structure abnormalities in autism. The study, which included over 800 individuals, is among the largest to ever look at brain structure in autism. In contrast to many other, smaller studies that generally included fewer than 100 individuals, they found that brain structure abnormalities are very modest in autism. Overall brain volume is enlarged by 1-2% and changes in regional brain volumes are minimal; only the superior temporal gyrus, a region involved in social cognition, demonstrated enlarged volume in autism.