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High‐functioning autism (HFA) and schizophrenia (SZ) are two of the main neurodevelopmental disorders, sharing several clinical dimensions and risk factors. Their exact relationship is poorly understood, and few studies have directly compared both disorders. Our aim was thus to directly compare neuroanatomy of HFA and SZ using a multimodal MRI design.

We scanned 79 male adult subjects with 3T MRI (23 with HFA, 24 with SZ and 32 healthy controls, with similar non‐verbal IQ). We compared them using both diffusion‐based whole‐brain tractography and T1 voxel‐based morphometry.

HFA and SZ groups exhibited similar white matter alterations in the left fronto‐occipital inferior fasciculus with a decrease in generalized fractional anisotropy compared with controls. In grey matter, the HFA group demonstrated bilateral prefrontal and anterior cingulate increases in contrast with …