Attentive brain states in infants with and without later autism

Abstract

Early difficulties in engaging attentive brain states in social settings could affect learning and have cascading effects on social development. We investigated this possibility using multichannel electroencephalography during a face/non-face paradigm in 8-month-old infants with (FH, n = 91) and without (noFH, n = 40) a family history of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An event-related potential component reflecting attention engagement, the Nc, was compared between FH infants who received a diagnosis of ASD at 3 years of age (FH-ASD; n = 19), FH infants who did not (FH-noASD; n = 72) and noFH infants (who also did not, hereafter noFH-noASD; n = 40). ‘Prototypical’ microstates during social attention were extracted from the noFH-noASD group and examined in relation to later categorical and dimensional outcome. Machine-learning was used to identify the microstate features that best predicted ASD and social adaptive skills at three years. Results suggested that whilst measures of brain state timing were related to categorical ASD outcome, brain state strength was related to dimensional measures of social functioning. Specifically, the FH-ASD group showed shorter Nc latency relative to other groups, and duration of the attentive microstate responses to faces was informative for categorical outcome prediction. Reduced Nc amplitude difference between faces with direct gaze and a non-social control stimulus and strength of the attentive microstate to faces contributed to the prediction of dimensional variation in social skills. Taken together, this provides consistent evidence that atypical attention engagement precedes the emergence of difficulties in socialization and indicates that using the spatio-temporal characteristics of whole-brain activation to define brain states in infancy provides an important new approach to understanding of the neurodevelopmental mechanisms that lead to ASD.

EEG microstates suggest atypical resting‐state network activity in high‐functioning children and adolescents with autism spectrum development

“…The current finding also suggests that attention allocation and visual processing and how these processes are supported by sensorimotor processes, such as eye movement control, during the resting‐state task may differ between groups. A recent study showed that microstates occurring during gaze to a face is predictive of autism spectrum diagnosis in infants (Gui et al., 2021). Thus, our future work will include examinations of changes in microstates in a specific task context, such as visual exploration and attention control.…”

The Emergence of ADHD Comorbidity in School-Aged Children with ASD Impacts Resting-State Brain Networks Dynamics

“…To the best of our knowledge, only a few other studies using a microstate approach in individuals with ASD have been published (49)(50)(51)(52)(53)(54)(55). Across resting-state studies, D'Croz-Baron and colleagues found six microstate maps that best described their dataset during an eyes-closed condition (49).…”

Neuroadaptive electroencephalography: a proof-of-principle study in infants

“…At the start of each block, one of the face stimuli was selected to be sampled. This stimulus was repeatedly presented for a total of 12 trials per block; we decided to present 12 trials in each block as this number of trials was 20% higher than the typical minimum trial number (10) used in infant Nc studies to allow for data loss (Munsters et al 2019, Gui et al 2021. Each block started with a red spiral to attract the infants' attention to the screen.…”

“…The success of BO-based approaches are dependent on reliable and meaningful neural signatures to be used as target metrics. In the current proof-of-concept study, we chose our parameters and measures for the ERP features based on the previous literature and offline analysis of pilot and existing datasets (Gui et al 2021). The preprocessing methods and calculation of ERP features however vary between studies.…”

“…Data were recorded at a sampling rate of 500Hz. Since the Nc is most prominent at frontal-central sites (Courchesne et al 1981, Gui et al 2021, EEG was recorded at six channels placed at locations FC1, Fz, FC2, C1, Cz, C2 in metal electrode holders in infant-sized caps (sizes K -42cm, or KS -46 cm). The two remaining electrodes were placed at locations P7, and Oz and functioned as our reference electrodes for re-referencing during the real-time EEG analysis.…”