Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Sep 1;177(9):834-843.
doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.19030331. Epub 2020 Jun 16.

Subcortical Brain Volume, Regional Cortical Thickness, and Cortical Surface Area Across Disorders: Findings From the ENIGMA ADHD, ASD, and OCD Working Groups

Premika S W Boedhoe  1 , Daan van Rooij  1 , Martine Hoogman  1 , Jos W R Twisk  1 , Lianne Schmaal  1 , Yoshinari Abe  1 , Pino Alonso  1 , Stephanie H Ameis  1 , Anatoly Anikin  1 , Alan Anticevic  1 , Celso Arango  1 , Paul D Arnold  1 , Philip Asherson  1 , Francesca Assogna  1 , Guillaume Auzias  1 , Tobias Banaschewski  1 , Alexander Baranov  1 , Marcelo C Batistuzzo  1 , Sarah Baumeister  1 , Ramona Baur-Streubel  1 , Marlene Behrmann  1 , Mark A Bellgrove  1 , Francesco Benedetti  1 , Jan C Beucke  1 , Joseph Biederman  1 , Irene Bollettini  1 , Anushree Bose  1 , Janita Bralten  1 , Ivanei E Bramati  1 , Daniel Brandeis  1 , Silvia Brem  1 , Brian P Brennan  1 , Geraldo F Busatto  1 , Sara Calderoni  1 , Anna Calvo  1 , Rosa Calvo  1 , Francisco X Castellanos  1 , Mara Cercignani  1 , Tiffany M Chaim-Avancini  1 , Kaylita C Chantiluke  1 , Yuqi Cheng  1 , Kang Ik K Cho  1 , Anastasia Christakou  1 , David Coghill  1 , Annette Conzelmann  1 , Ana I Cubillo  1 , Anders M Dale  1 , Sara Dallaspezia  1 , Eileen Daly  1 , Damiaan Denys  1 , Christine Deruelle  1 , Adriana Di Martino  1 , Ilan Dinstein  1 , Alysa E Doyle  1 , Sarah Durston  1 , Eric A Earl  1 , Christine Ecker  1 , Stefan Ehrlich  1 , Benjamin A Ely  1 , Jeffrey N Epstein  1 , Thomas Ethofer  1 , Damien A Fair  1 , Andreas J Fallgatter  1 , Stephen V Faraone  1 , Jennifer Fedor  1 , Xin Feng  1 , Jamie D Feusner  1 , Jackie Fitzgerald  1 , Kate D Fitzgerald  1 , Jean-Paul Fouche  1 , Christine M Freitag  1 , Egill A Fridgeirsson  1 , Thomas Frodl  1 , Matt C Gabel  1 , Louise Gallagher  1 , Tinatin Gogberashvili  1 , Ilaria Gori  1 , Patricia Gruner  1 , Deniz A Gürsel  1 , Shlomi Haar  1 , Jan Haavik  1 , Geoffrey B Hall  1 , Neil A Harrison  1 , Catharina A Hartman  1 , Dirk J Heslenfeld  1 , Yoshiyuki Hirano  1 , Pieter J Hoekstra  1 , Marcelo Q Hoexter  1 , Sarah Hohmann  1 , Marie F Høvik  1 , Hao Hu  1 , Chaim Huyser  1 , Neda Jahanshad  1 , Maria Jalbrzikowski  1 , Anthony James  1 , Joost Janssen  1 , Fern Jaspers-Fayer  1 , Terry L Jernigan  1 , Dmitry Kapilushniy  1 , Bernd Kardatzki  1 , Georgii Karkashadze  1 , Norbert Kathmann  1 , Christian Kaufmann  1 , Clare Kelly  1 , Sabin Khadka  1 , Joseph A King  1 , Kathrin Koch  1 , Gregor Kohls  1 , Kerstin Konrad  1 , Masaru Kuno  1 , Jonna Kuntsi  1 , Gerd Kvale  1 , Jun Soo Kwon  1 , Luisa Lázaro  1 , Sara Lera-Miguel  1 , Klaus-Peter Lesch  1 , Liesbeth Hoekstra  1 , Yanni Liu  1 , Christine Lochner  1 , Mario R Louza  1 , Beatriz Luna  1 , Astri J Lundervold  1 , Charles B Malpas  1 , Paulo Marques  1 , Rachel Marsh  1 , Ignacio Martínez-Zalacaín  1 , David Mataix-Cols  1 , Paulo Mattos  1 , Hazel McCarthy  1 , Jane McGrath  1 , Mitul A Mehta  1 , José M Menchón  1 , Maarten Mennes  1 , Mauricio Moller Martinho  1 , Pedro S Moreira  1 , Astrid Morer  1 , Pedro Morgado  1 , Filippo Muratori  1 , Clodagh M Murphy  1 , Declan G M Murphy  1 , Akiko Nakagawa  1 , Takashi Nakamae  1 , Tomohiro Nakao  1 , Leyla Namazova-Baranova  1 , Janardhanan C Narayanaswamy  1 , Rosa Nicolau  1 , Joel T Nigg  1 , Stephanie E Novotny  1 , Erika L Nurmi  1 , Eileen Oberwelland Weiss  1 , Ruth L O'Gorman Tuura  1 , Kirsten O'Hearn  1 , Joseph O'Neill  1 , Jaap Oosterlaan  1 , Bob Oranje  1 , Yannis Paloyelis  1 , Mara Parellada  1 , Paul Pauli  1 , Chris Perriello  1 , John Piacentini  1 , Fabrizio Piras  1 , Federica Piras  1 , Kerstin J Plessen  1 , Olga Puig  1 , J Antoni Ramos-Quiroga  1 , Y C Janardhan Reddy  1 , Andreas Reif  1 , Liesbeth Reneman  1 , Alessandra Retico  1 , Pedro G P Rosa  1 , Katya Rubia  1 , Oana Georgiana Rus  1 , Yuki Sakai  1 , Anouk Schrantee  1 , Lena Schwarz  1 , Lizanne J S Schweren  1 , Jochen Seitz  1 , Philip Shaw  1 , Devon Shook  1 , Tim J Silk  1 , H Blair Simpson  1 , Norbert Skokauskas  1 , Juan Carlos Soliva Vila  1 , Anastasia Solovieva  1 , Noam Soreni  1 , Carles Soriano-Mas  1 , Gianfranco Spalletta  1 , Emily R Stern  1 , Michael C Stevens  1 , S Evelyn Stewart  1 , Gustavo Sudre  1 , Philip R Szeszko  1 , Leanne Tamm  1 , Margot J Taylor  1 , David F Tolin  1 , Michela Tosetti  1 , Fernanda Tovar-Moll  1 , Aki Tsuchiyagaito  1 , Theo G M van Erp  1 , Guido A van Wingen  1 , Alasdair Vance  1 , Ganesan Venkatasubramanian  1 , Oscar Vilarroya  1 , Yolanda Vives-Gilabert  1 , Georg G von Polier  1 , Susanne Walitza  1 , Gregory L Wallace  1 , Zhen Wang  1 , Thomas Wolfers  1 , Yuliya N Yoncheva  1 , Je-Yeon Yun  1 , Marcus V Zanetti  1 , Fengfeng Zhou  1 , Georg C Ziegler  1 , Kathrin C Zierhut  1 , Marcel P Zwiers  1 ; ENIGMA ADHD working group  1 ; ENIGMA ASD working group  1 ; ENIGMA OCD working group  1 ; Paul M Thompson  1 , Dan J Stein  1 , Jan Buitelaar  1 , Barbara Franke  1 , Odile A van den Heuvel  1
Affiliations

Subcortical Brain Volume, Regional Cortical Thickness, and Cortical Surface Area Across Disorders: Findings From the ENIGMA ADHD, ASD, and OCD Working Groups

Premika S W Boedhoe et al. Am J Psychiatry. .

Erratum in

  • Correction to Boedhoe et al.
    [No authors listed] [No authors listed] Am J Psychiatry. 2020 Sep 1;177(9):843. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.1779correction. Am J Psychiatry. 2020. PMID: 32867522 No abstract available.

Abstract

Objective: Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are common neurodevelopmental disorders that frequently co-occur. The authors sought to directly compare these disorders using structural brain imaging data from ENIGMA consortium data.

Methods: Structural T1-weighted whole-brain MRI data from healthy control subjects (N=5,827) and from patients with ADHD (N=2,271), ASD (N=1,777), and OCD (N=2,323) from 151 cohorts worldwide were analyzed using standardized processing protocols. The authors examined subcortical volume, cortical thickness, and cortical surface area differences within a mega-analytical framework, pooling measures extracted from each cohort. Analyses were performed separately for children, adolescents, and adults, using linear mixed-effects models adjusting for age, sex, and site (and intracranial volume for subcortical and surface area measures).

Results: No shared differences were found among all three disorders, and shared differences between any two disorders did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Children with ADHD compared with those with OCD had smaller hippocampal volumes, possibly influenced by IQ. Children and adolescents with ADHD also had smaller intracranial volume than control subjects and those with OCD or ASD. Adults with ASD showed thicker frontal cortices compared with adult control subjects and other clinical groups. No OCD-specific differences were observed across different age groups and surface area differences among all disorders in childhood and adulthood.

Conclusions: The study findings suggest robust but subtle differences across different age groups among ADHD, ASD, and OCD. ADHD-specific intracranial volume and hippocampal differences in children and adolescents, and ASD-specific cortical thickness differences in the frontal cortex in adults, support previous work emphasizing structural brain differences in these disorders.

Keywords: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorder; ENIGMA; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Structural MRI.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

All other authors from the ENIGMA ADHD working group have no conflicts of interest related to this study.

Figures

Figure 1a:
Figure 1a:
Subcortical volume differences in children with ADHD, ASD, or OCD compared to controls Significant results (FDR q ≤ 0.05) are indicated by an asterisk (Supplementary Table S5). For Effect size values across disorders see Supplementary Table S14. Abbreviations: Confidence Interval (CI); Intracranial volume (ICV)
Figure 1b:
Figure 1b:
Subcortical volume differences in adolescents with ADHD, ASD, or OCD compared to controls Significant results (FDR q ≤ 0.05) are indicated by an asterisk (Supplementary Table S7). For Effect size values across disorders see Supplementary Table S17. Abbreviations: Confidence Interval (CI); Intracranial volume (ICV)
Figure 1c:
Figure 1c:
Subcortical volume differences in adults with ADHD, ASD, or OCD compared to controls Significant results (FDR q ≤ 0.05) are indicated by an asterisk (Supplementary Table S10). For Effect size values across disorders see Supplementary Table S20. Abbreviations: Confidence Interval (CI); Intracranial volume (ICV)
Figure 2:
Figure 2:
Thicker cortices of several frontal regions in adults with ASD compared to those with OCD or ADHD Regions that showed a significant (FDR q ≤ 0.05) difference in cortical thickness among adults with ASD, ADHD or OCD. Positive effect sizes d (blue) indicate thicker cortices in adults with ASD patients compared to those with ADHD or OCD.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Faraone SV, Asherson P, Banaschewski T, Biederman J, Buitelaar JK, Ramos-Quiroga JA, & Franke B. (2015). Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Nature Rev. Dis. Primers, 1, 15020. - PubMed
    1. Elsabbagh M, Divan G, Koh YJ, Kim YS, Kauchali S, Marcín C, ... Yasamy MT & Fombonne E. (2012). Global prevalence of autism and other pervasive developmental disorders. Autism research, 5(3), 160–179. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ruscio AM, Stein DJ, Chiu WT, & Kessler RC (2010). The epidemiology of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Molecular psychiatry, 15(1), 53–63. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Anholt GE, Cath DC, van Oppen P, Eikelenboom M, Smit JH, van Megen H, & van Balkom AJ (2010). Autism and ADHD symptoms in patients with OCD: are they associated with specific OC symptom dimensions or OC symptom severity?. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 40(5), 580–589. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Antshel KM, Zhang-James Y, & Faraone SV (2013). The comorbidity of ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Expert review of neurotherapeutics, 13(10), 1117–1128. - PubMed

MeSH terms

Grants and funding