Atypical Functional Brain Activation During a Multiple Object Tracking Task in Girls With Turner Syndrome: Neurocorrelates of Reduced Spatiotemporal Resolution

Abstract

Turner syndrome is associated with spatial and numerical cognitive impairments. We hypothesized that these nonverbal cognitive impairments result from limits in spatial and temporal processing, particularly as it affects attention. To examine spatiotemporal attention in girls with Turner syndrome versus typically developing controls, we used a multiple object tracking task during functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) imaging. Participants actively tracked a target among six distracters or passively viewed the animations. Neural activation in girls with Turner syndrome during object tracking overlapped with but was dissimilar to the canonical frontoparietal network evident in typically developing controls and included greater limbic activity. Task performance and atypical functional activation indicate anomalous development of cortical and subcortical temporal and spatial processing circuits in girls with Turner syndrome.