Alteration of the large-scale white-matter functional networks in autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder whose core deficit is social dysfunction. Previous studies have indicated that structural changes in white matter are associated with autism spectrum disorder. However, few studies have explored the alteration of the large-scale white-matter functional networks in autism spectrum disorder. Here, we identified ten white-matter functional networks on resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data using the K-means clustering algorithm. Compared with the white matter and white-matter functional network connectivity of the healthy controls group, we found significantly decreased white matter and white-matter functional network connectivity mainly located within the Occipital network, Middle temporo-frontal network, and Deep network in autism spectrum disorder. Compared with healthy controls, findings from white-matter gray-matter functional network connectivity showed the decreased white-matter gray-matter functional network connectivity mainly distributing in the Occipital network and Deep network. Moreover, we compared the spontaneous activity of white-matter functional networks between the two groups. We found that the spontaneous activity of Middle temporo-frontal and Deep network was significantly decreased in autism spectrum disorder. Finally, the correlation analysis showed that the white matter and white-matter functional network connectivity between the Middle temporo-frontal network and others networks and the spontaneous activity of the Deep network were significantly correlated with the Social Responsiveness Scale scores of autism spectrum disorder. Together, our findings indicate that changes in the white-matter functional networks are associated behavioral deficits in autism spectrum disorder.

Static and Dynamic Connectivity Structure of White-Matter Functional Network across the Adult Lifespan

“…Furthermore, a recent study also presented evidence which elucidates the electrophysiological and structural foundation of BOLD WM-FC from the perspective of electrophysiological synchronization (Huang et al, 2023). The role of white matter signal in the field of rs-fMRI studies is increasingly recognized, and research has investigated the alteration of WM function in neuro-psychiatric disorders (Chen et al, 2023b;Cui et al, 2021;Fan et al, 2023;Jiang et al, 2019;Wen et al, 2022;Zhang et al, 2021b), which reveals disease related-abnormalities, provides new insights into brain pathophysiology, and potentially yields novel clinical biomarkers for brain diseases.…”