Structural and functional correlates of a quantitative autistic trait measured using the social responsive scale in neurotypical male adolescents.
SRS scores in typical teens line up with measurable thinning in social brain areas and altered dACC wiring.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Tu et al. (2016) scanned the brains of typical teen boys. They also gave them the Social Responsiveness Scale, or SRS.
The team wanted to know if higher SRS scores link to real brain changes. They looked at both cortical thickness and resting-state wiring.
What they found
Teens with higher SRS scores had thinner cortex in both sides of the insula and in the right superior temporal gyrus.
Their dorsal anterior cingulate, or dACC, also showed weaker resting-state links. The SRS was not just paper and pencil; it tracked living brain differences.
How this fits with other research
Bravo Balsa et al. (2024) later saw the same SRS pattern in adults, but they found it in the right temporoparietal junction, not the insula. Same trait, new brain spot.
Shokouhi et al. (2012) looked at teens with autism and saw more sulcal folding in the left insula. Pei-Chi saw thinner insula in typical teens with high traits. Together they hint that insula changes sit on a sliding scale.
Cramm et al. (2009) had already shown that university students with high SRS scores report more psychiatric problems. Pei-Chi adds brain proof that these scores mark real biology, not just mood reports.
Why it matters
You can treat the SRS as a ruler, not just a label. If a typical teen lands a high score, there may be subtle but real brain signatures. This supports using SRS in schools or clinics to spot social vulnerability long before a full autism work-up is needed. Next time you screen, trust the number; it is tied to neural facts.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behaviors associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been suggested to be considered as quantitative traits. This study investigated the structural and functional correlates of autistic traits measured using the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) in neurotypical adolescents. Twenty-six neurotypical male adolescents (12-18 years old) were recruited for this study and underwent structural and resting functional magnetic resonance image scanning, and intelligence quotient and SRS evaluations. We used the automated surface-based method (FreeSurfer) to measure cortical thickness and seed-based functional connectivity (FC) analysis to derive the FC map of the dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC). Brain-wise regression analyses of cortical thickness and FC maps on SRS scores were performed using a general linear model. The results indicated that higher autistic trait ratings of total SRS scores were associated with a thinner cortex in the left insula, right insula, and right superior temporal gyrus. Furthermore, we observed that only higher scores of social awareness were correlated with increased FC between the dACC and right superior temporal gyrus and decreased FC between the dACC and right putamen and thalamus. These results indicated that a quantitative trait in social cognition is associated with structural and connectivity variations linked to ASD patients. Autism Res 2016, 9: 570-578. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2016 · doi:10.1002/aur.1535