Aberrant Oscillatory Synchrony Is Biased Toward Specific Frequencies and Processing Domains in the Autistic Brain

Abstract

Background Prevailing theories suggest that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) results from impaired brain communication, causing aberrant synchrony among neuronal populations. However, it remains debated whether synchrony abnormalities are among local or long-range circuits, are circuit specific or are generalized, reflect hypersynchrony or reflect hyposynchrony, and are frequency band–specific or are distributed across the frequency spectrum. Methods To help clarify these unresolved questions, we recorded spontaneous magnetoencephalography data and used a data-driven, whole-brain analysis of frequency-specific interregional synchrony in higher-functioning adolescents and adults, with 17 ASD and 18 control subjects matched on age, IQ, and sex, and equal for motion. Results Individuals with ASD showed local hypersynchrony in the theta band (4–7 Hz) in the lateral occipitotemporal cortex. Long-range hyposynchrony was seen in the alpha band (10–13 Hz), which was most prominent in neural circuitry underpinning social processing. The magnitude of this alpha band hyposynchrony was correlated with social symptom severity. Conclusions These results suggest that although ASD is associated with both decreased long-range synchrony and increased posterior local synchrony, with each effect limited to a specific frequency band, impairments in social functioning may be most related to decreased alpha band synchronization between critical nodes of the social processing network.

Overt social interaction and resting state in young adult males with autism: core and contextual neural features

“…Along these lines, we have previously noted an encouraging correspondence between our published resting-state fMRI results and MEG phase locking measures (e.g. Ghuman et al, 2017;see Picci et al, for review of recent MEG studies), thus suggesting that at least some of the altered dynamics we report here were not due to intense sensory stimulation.…”

Adolescent development of cortical oscillations: Power, phase, and support of cognitive maturation

“…In a sample of 68 adolescents and young adults (aged 14–31 years), we employed MEG to explore intrinsic properties related to oscillatory developmental within and between cortical networks, with regard to both power and phase. Specifically, within frequency intervals related to interareal neural interactions (1–49 Hz) [40,41], we examined regional and network-level oscillatory power and functional coupling of well-defined brain networks using the phase-locking value (PLV), similar to recent approaches [42]. Unlike correlation or coherence measures, the PLV ignores the amplitude (power) relationship between 2 oscillators.…”

Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson’s Disease Induces Spontaneous Cortical Hypersynchrony In Extended Motor and Cognitive Networks

“…Connectedness at a cortical location is defined as the average phase locking between that location and every point on the cortex. We averaged the phase locking at each frequency to find what frequency bands showed a connectedness difference between the DBS-on and DBS-off conditions, as well as between those conditions and controls (Ghuman, van den Honert, Huppert, Wallace, & Martin, 2017; Gotts, Ramot, Jasmin, & Martin, 2019; Gotts et al, 2012). A significant difference between DBS-on and DBS-off was seen in the high beta/gamma band region from 26 to 50 Hz as shown in Figure 1A (DBS-on greater than DBS-off, p<0.05, cluster-level correction for multiple frequency comparisons).…”