Hypo- and hyper-connectivity in default mode network related to social impairment in tweens with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Background. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder, marked by impairment in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. Accumulating data suggests that alterations in functional connectivity might contribute to these deficits. Whereas functional connectivity in resting state fMRI is expressed by several resting-state networks, for this study we examined only few of them: auditory, language, salience and default mode networks. Our particular interest was in the default mode network (DMN), given its age dependent alterations of functional connectivity and its relation to social communication.