Neuropathology and Animal Models of Autism: Genetic and Environmental Factors

Table 1

Neuropathological findings in postmortem brains from autistic subjects from 2003 to 2012. Update of the table from Palmen et al. [19], which covered studies from 1980 to 2003.

Author and year	Journal	Sample size and features	Region of interest	Results
(1) Schumann and Amaral (2006) [37]	J Neurosci.	9 A; 10 C; all M; 10–44 years	Amygdala-lateral, basal central nuclei	12% decrease in total amygdala neurons. Fourteen % decrease in neuron number in lateral nucleus.
(2) Van Kooten et al. (2008) [38]	Brain	7 A; 4 M, 3 F; 10 C; 8 M, 2 F; 3–50 years	Fusiform gyrus (FG) and visual cortex	Neurons are fewer and smaller in size (~10–20%) in FG in autism.
(3) Whitney et al. (2008); [28]	Cerebellum	6 A; 5 M, 1 F; 4 C; 3 M, 1 F; 17–54 years	Cerebellar Purkinje cells in crus II	Reduction in PC cell number in 3 of the 6 autism cases.
(4) Hutsler and Zhang (2010) [39]	Brain Res	10 A, 15 C; 10–46 years	Frontal, parietal and temporal cortices	Increased spine density in layers 2 and 5, especially in temporal cortex.
(5) Courchesne et al. (2011) [40]	JAMA.	7 A; 6 C; all M; 2–16 years	Dorsolateral and medial prefrontal cortices	More neurons (67%) in the prefrontal cortex in autism children with increased brain weight (17.6%)
(6) Santos et al. (2011) [41]	Brain Res	4 A; 2 M, 2 F; 3 C; 2 M, 1 F; 4–11 years	Fronto-insular cortex	58% more neurons in autism compared to controls.
(7) Jacot-Descombes et al. (2012) [42]	Acta Neuropathol	8 A; 6 M, 2 F; 8 C; 7 M, 1 F; 4–66 years	Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex	Smaller pyramidal neuronal size (18%) in Brodmann areas 44 and 45 in autism compared to controls. No change in cell number.

A: autism; C: control; M: male; F: female.