The British Journal of Psychiatry 160: 659-663 (1992)
© 1992 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Central conduction time in childhood autism
RJ McClelland, DG Eyre, D Watson, GJ Calvert and E Sherrard
Department of Mental Health, Queen's University, Belfast.
To investigate the integrity of the brain-stem in 20 mentally handicapped
children who met the Rutter criteria for autism, brain-stem auditory evoked
potentials were obtained for a range of stimulus intensities. Central
conduction times (CCTs) were calculated for the Wave I-Wave V interval of
the brain-stem potentials. In children under 14 years of age CCTs were
normal. In children 14 years of age and over, three of four girls and eight
of nine boys had CCTs exceeding normal limits when compared with a group of
controls of normal intelligence, matched for age and sex. CCTs recorded
from a group of non-autistic mentally handicapped children were within
normal limits. The age distribution are consistent with a maturational
defect in myelination within the brain-stem in autism, a defect which may
have a much wider anatomical distribution throughout cortical and
subcortical structures.