Abstract
Socio-communicative impairments are salient features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) from a young age. The anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC), or Brodmann area 10, is a key processing area for social function, and atypical development of this area is thought to play a role in the social deficits in ASD. It is important to understand these brain functions in developing children with ASD. However, these brain functions have not yet been well described under conscious conditions in young children with ASD. In the present study, we focused on the brain hemodynamic functional connectivity between the right and the left aPFC in children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children and investigated whether there was a correlation between this connectivity and social ability. Brain hemodynamic fluctuations were measured non-invasively by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) in 3- to 7-year-old children with ASD (n = 15) and gender- and age-matched TD children (n = 15). The functional connectivity between the right and the left aPFC was assessed by measuring the coherence for low-frequency spontaneous fluctuations (0.01 – 0.10 Hz) during a narrated picture-card show. Coherence analysis demonstrated that children with ASD had a significantly higher inter-hemispheric connectivity with 0.02-Hz fluctuations, whereas a power analysis did not demonstrate significant differences between the two groups in terms of low frequency fluctuations (0.01 – 0.10 Hz). This aberrant higher connectivity in children with ASD was positively correlated with the severity of social deficit, as scored with the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule. This is the first study to demonstrate aberrant brain functional connectivity between the right and the left aPFC under conscious conditions in young children with ASD.
Highlights
The importance of the anterior prefrontal cortex, or Brodmann area10 (BA10), for higher-order cognitive functions is largely undisputed [1,2,3], and several authors have placed this brain region at the top of the frontal processing hierarchy [4,5]
near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is valuable for brain functional monitoring in young children under conscious conditions [26,27], which is difficult to achieve with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
Absolute Hemodynamic Power Value There was no significant difference between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD)
Summary
The importance of the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC), or Brodmann area (BA10), for higher-order cognitive functions is largely undisputed [1,2,3], and several authors have placed this brain region at the top of the frontal processing hierarchy [4,5]. BA10 has been implicated in the ability to infer another person’s feelings and thoughts, often referred to as theory of mind (TOM), as demonstrated by a lesion study [6] and neuroimaging studies [7,8]. Several neuroanatomical and regional cerebral blood flow studies on ASD subjects have found abnormalities in BA10 [17,18,19]. This finding suggests that brain dysfunction in BA10 is implicated in the impairments in reciprocal social interaction observed in ASD. The role of brain dysfunction BA10 in young children with ASD remains unclear
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