Various aspects of hemispheric asymmetry can be altered in ASD or schizophrenia, which include regional anatomical measures of gray and white matter, structural and functional connectivity, and behavioral associations (non-right-handedness has an elevated frequency in both disorders compared to the general population). LeftвЂ“right asymmetry is a pervasive organizing principle of the human brainвЂ™s structure and function, including for networks involved in language and social cognition, and executive and affective processes. Therefore, both shared and independent genetic contributions are involved.

Large-scale cross-disorder analyses have pointed to shared genetic contributions to ASD and schizophrenia, but although these have been particularly evident for rare mutations of relatively high penetrance, the genetic correlation based on common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) has been estimated at only roughly 0.2 or less. However, such similarities may be relatively superficial and not reflect etiological commonalities. There are also features often found in common between ASD and schizophrenia, including impaired executive functions and deficits in social cognition and competence in the verbal and non-verbal domains. This has led to models of psychosis and ASD as opposing disorders of the social brain that partly mirror average sex differences. In contrast, positive symptoms in schizophrenia, which can involve the incorrect attribution of thoughts or feelings to external agents, have been conceived in terms of hyper-mentalizing. Given that average sex differences also exist in these dimensions, with males tending to outperform on systemizing tasks and underperform on empathizing tasks, ASD was proposed to resemble excessive masculinization of the brain. A similar concept involves over-mechanizing in ASD (a focus on interaction with the physical environment) and under-mentalizing (deficits in attributing mental states to others). The cognitive and behavioral profile of ASD has been conceived in terms of over-systemizing (focusing heavily on the component variables of systems) and under-empathizing (a deficit in recognizing the thoughts and emotions of others). Overall, the results indicate that distinct patterns of subtly altered brain asymmetry may be functionally relevant manifestations of polygenic risks for ASD and schizophrenia, but do not support brain masculinization or feminization in their etiologies.ДЄutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a childhood-onset disorder that features deficits in social communication and social interaction, together with restricted or repetitive behavior. Annotation based on meta-analyzed functional imaging data showed that both polygenic risks were associated with asymmetries of regions important for language and executive functions, consistent with behavioral associations that arose in phenome-wide association analysis.

Each polygenic risk score was associated with multivariate brain asymmetry after adjusting for sex, ASD rвЂ‰=вЂ‰0.03, pвЂ‰=вЂ‰2.17вЂ‰Г—вЂ‰10 в€’9, and schizophrenia rвЂ‰=вЂ‰0.04, pвЂ‰=вЂ‰2.61вЂ‰Г—вЂ‰10 в€’11, but the multivariate patterns were mostly distinct for the two polygenic risks and neither resembled average sex differences.

Polygenic risks for the two disorders were positively correlated ( rвЂ‰=вЂ‰0.08, pвЂ‰=вЂ‰7.13вЂ‰Г—вЂ‰10 в€’50) and both were higher in females compared to males, consistent with biased participation against higher-risk males. Here we mapped multivariate associations of polygenic risk scores for ASD and schizophrenia with asymmetries of regional cerebral cortical surface area, thickness, and subcortical volume measures in 32,256 participants from the UK Biobank. LeftвЂ“right asymmetry of the brain is an important aspect of its organization that shows average differences between the sexes and can be altered in both ASD and schizophrenia. empathizing cognitive styles, with resemblances to male vs. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia have been conceived as partly opposing disorders in terms of systemizing vs.

Noise mapping and asymmetry