Neural Correlates of Set‐Shifting in Children With Autism

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is often associated with high levels of inflexible thinking and rigid behavior. The neural correlates of these behaviors have been investigated in adults and older adolescents, but not children. Prior studies utilized set-shifting tasks that engaged multiple levels of shifting, and depended on learning abstract rules and establishing a strong prepotent bias. These additional demands complicate simple interpretations of the results. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural correlates of set-shifting in 20 children (ages 7-14) with ASD and 19 typically developing, matched, control children. Participants completed a set-shifting task that minimized non-shifting task demands through the use of concrete instructions that provide spatial mapping of stimuli-responses. The shift/stay sets were given an equal number of trials to limit the prepotent bias. Both groups showed an equivalent ‘switch cost’, responding less accurately and slower to Switch stimuli than Stay stimuli, although the ASD group was less accurate overall. Both groups showed activation in prefrontal, striatal, parietal, and cerebellum regions known to govern effective set-shifts. Compared to controls, children with ASD demonstrated decreased activation of the right middle temporal gyrus across all trials, but increased activation in the mid-dorsal cingulate cortex/superior frontal gyrus, left middle frontal and right inferior frontal gyri during the Switch vs. Stay contrast. The successful behavioral switching performance of children with ASD comes at the cost of requiring greater engagement of frontal regions, suggesting less efficiency at this lowest level of shifting.

Enhancing the representation of functional connectivity networks by fusing multi‐view information for autism spectrum disorder diagnosis

“…Both the left middle frontal gyrus and left Heschl's gyrus , as part of the EAN, contributed much to ASD classification. The left middle frontal gyrus showed increased activity in set‐shifting task in ASD children compared to controls (Yerys et al, ). Left insula , region in CON, was reported highly associated with the communicative and emotional deficits of ASD (Di Martino et al, ; Leung, Pang, Cassel, Brian, Smith, & Taylor, ; Urbain et al, ).…”

Demystifying cognitive flexibility: Implications for clinical and developmental neuroscience

“…The instruction (and therefore, the task) is always the same no matter how individuals choose the object. Stimulus-response mapping reversal can also be categorized as a form of set shifting, where the goal at hand remains the same (press a button × for stimulus y) but simply changing the hand press determines the switch in set (e.g., [13]). Thus, set shifting entails using a new set of rules to complete the same task.…”

“…Currently, there are four published neuroimaging studies of cognitive flexibility in ASD [13, 36, 57, 73]. The Schmitz et al (2006) and Yerys et al (2015) studies reported greater activation in frontoparietal regions in children with ASD during a cognitive flexibility task, whereas Shafritz et al (2008) reported reduced activation in children with ASD, which correlated with higher RRBs.…”

Specific Functional Connectivity Patterns of Middle Temporal Gyrus Subregions in Children and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…However, most ASD studies examined the MTG as a whole brain region or considered only the anterior MTG (aMTG) and posterior MTG (pMTG). In particular, individuals with ASD showed diminished neural activity in bilateral MTG while mentalizing (i.e., in a social context) [Assaf et al, ; Sato, Toichi, Uono, & Kochiyama, ], decreased activation of the right MTG across all set‐shifting trials [Yerys et al, ], and decreased cortical activation in the left MTG during silent reading [Ogawa et al, ]. In contrast, other studies reported significantly increased activation in the left MTG during irony processing [Wang, Lee, Sigman, & Dapretto, ], and increased activation in the right MTG during a response naming task [Knaus, Silver, Lindgren, Hadjikhani, & Tager‐Flusberg, ] in individuals with ASD.…”