Is there an anatomical endophenotype for neurodevelopmental disorders? A review of dual disorder anatomical likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analyses of grey matter volumes

The term "neurodevelopmental disorder" broadly encompasses conditions thought to arise early in development and includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism among others. These conditions share a number of genetic and environmental risk factors postulated to lead to common difficulties in socio-emotional processing, communication and cognitive function. The alternative position is that, while the same traits are affected across these conditions, the nature or direction in which they are modified may be distinct. MRI studies provide a rapidly expanding and rich database which we propose can be used to contribute to this debate. Anatomical likelihood estimation (ALE) is a method of meta-analysis applied to voxel-based MRI studies. We have adapted this method to explore the extent to which schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and autism share a common brain structural phenotype. We will review this work here and discuss whether there is sufficient other evidence to justify a common framework for further research into the inter-relatedness of such conditions.