Brain connectivity and high functioning autism: A promising path of research that needs refined models, methodological convergence, and stronger behavioral links

Vissers, Marlies E.; Cohen, Michael X; Geurts, Hilde M.

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.09.003

Cited by 368 publications

(353 citation statements)

References 124 publications

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“…The present study corroborates aberrant connectivity in ASD (Belmonte et al, 2004;Courchesne and Pierce, 2005;Vissers et al, 2012) and highlights the relationship between the left uncinante and socio-affective deficits.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

White matter structure in the uncinate fasciculus: Implications for socio-affective deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Samson

Dougherty

Lee

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

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a b s t r a c tIndividuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have social and communication deficits and difficulties regulating emotions. The brain bases of these socio-affective deficits are not yet clear, but one candidate is structural connectivity in the left uncinate fasciculus, which connects limbic temporal and frontal areas thought to be involved in socio-affective processing. In this study, we assessed white matter structure in the left and right uncinate fasciculus in 18 high-functioning individuals with ASD and 18 group-matched typically developing (TD) controls using Diffusion Tensor Imaging. To test specificity of the associations, we also examined the association between both uncinate fasciculi and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Compared to TD individuals, individuals with ASD had significantly lower fractional anisotropy (FA) in the left and right uncinate. Group status significantly moderated the association between left uncinate and socio-affective deficits, indicating that within the ASD group, FA was associated with socio-affective deficits: Individuals with ASD with lower FA in the left uncinate had significantly more social and emotion regulation deficits. There was no association with restricted and repetitive behaviors. This study provides evidence that the left uncinate may play a critical role in socio-affective skills in individuals with ASD.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

White matter structure in the uncinate fasciculus: Implications for socio-affective deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Samson

Dougherty

Lee

et al. 2016

Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

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“…The big picture emerging from those reports is lowered FC between frontal and posterior brain regions (see Vissers, Cohen, & Geurts, 2012 for a review), as formulated in the underconnectivity theory of autism (Just, Keller, Malave, Kana, & Varma, 2012). …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brain dynamics in ASD during movie‐watching show idiosyncratic functional integration and segregation

Bolton

Jochaut

Giraud

et al. 2018

Human Brain Mapping

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To refine our understanding of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), studies of the brain in dynamic, multimodal and ecological experimental settings are required. One way to achieve this is to compare the neural responses of ASD and typically developing (TD) individuals when viewing a naturalistic movie, but the temporal complexity of the stimulus hampers this task, and the presence of intrinsic functional connectivity (FC) may overshadow movie‐driven fluctuations. Here, we detected inter‐subject functional correlation (ISFC) transients to disentangle movie‐induced functional changes from underlying resting‐state activity while probing FC dynamically. When considering the number of significant ISFC excursions triggered by the movie across the brain, connections between remote functional modules were more heterogeneously engaged in the ASD population. Dynamically tracking the temporal profiles of those ISFC changes and tying them to specific movie subparts, this idiosyncrasy in ASD responses was then shown to involve functional integration and segregation mechanisms such as response inhibition, background suppression, or multisensory integration, while low‐level visual processing was spared. Through the application of a new framework for the study of dynamic experimental paradigms, our results reveal a temporally localized idiosyncrasy in ASD responses, specific to short‐lived episodes of long‐range functional interplays.

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“…The study results in [40] suggested that, for adults with ASD, local hyper-connectivity in the frontal area appeared with long-range hypo-connectivity. The abnormal connectivity appeared in in ASD may be due to a primary imbalance between excitation/inhibition (E/I) ratio [41].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 84%

Global Synchronization of Multichannel EEG Based on Rényi Entropy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Han

Kang

et al. 2017

Applied Sciences

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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been defined as a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder, involving communication, social interaction and repetitive behaviors. Currently, it is still challenging to understand the differences of brain activity between ASD and healthy children. In this study, we propose calculating the Rényi entropy of the eigenvalues derived from the signal correlation matrix to measure the global synchronization in multichannel electroencephalograph (EEG) from 16 children with ASD (aged 8-12 years) and 16 age-and sex-matched healthy controls at the resting state. The results indicate that there is a significantly diminished global synchronization from ASD to healthy control. The proposed method can help to reveal the intrinsic characteristics of multichannel EEG signals in children with ASD and aspects that distinguish them from healthy children.

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Brain connectivity and high functioning autism: A promising path of research that needs refined models, methodological convergence, and stronger behavioral links

Cited by 368 publications

References 124 publications

White matter structure in the uncinate fasciculus: Implications for socio-affective deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

White matter structure in the uncinate fasciculus: Implications for socio-affective deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Brain dynamics in ASD during movie‐watching show idiosyncratic functional integration and segregation

Global Synchronization of Multichannel EEG Based on Rényi Entropy in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

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