Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disability with global implication. Altered brain connectivity in the language network has frequently been reported in ASD patients using task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) compared to typically developing (TD) participants. Most of these studies have focused on a specific age group or mixed age groups with ASD. In the current study, we investigated age-related changes in functional connectivity related measure, degree centrality (DC), in the language network across three age groups with ASD (113 children, 113 adolescents and 103 adults) using resting-state fMRI data collected from the autism brain imaging data exchange repository. We identified regions with significant group-wise differences between ASD and TD groups for three age cohorts using DC based on graph theory. We found that both children and adolescents with ASD showed decreased DC in Broca’s area compared to age-matched TD groups. Adults with ASD showed decreased DC in Wernicke’s area compared to TD adults. We also observed increased DC in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) for children with ASD compared to TD children and for adults with ASD compared to TD adults, respectively. Overall, functional differences occurred in key language processing regions such as the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) related to language production and comprehension across three age cohorts. We explored correlations between DC values of our findings with autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) scores related to severity of ASD symptoms in the ASD group. We found that DC values of the left IFG demonstrated negative correlations with ADOS scores in children and adolescents with ASD. The left STG showed significant negative correlations with ADOS scores in adults with ASD. These results might shed light on the language network regions that should be further explored for prognosis, diagnosis, and monitoring of ASD in three age groups.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disability characterized by impairments in language, social interaction and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2000)
Our finding showed that adults with ASD had decreased degree centrality (DC) in the left superior temporal gyrus (STG) and increased DC in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG) compared to typically developing (TD) adults
The current study investigated differences in DC of language network between ASD and TD groups across three age cohorts using rs-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We found that both children and adolescents with ASD showed decreased DC in Broca’s area compared to age-matched TD groups
Summary
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disability characterized by impairments in language, social interaction and restricted, repetitive, and stereotyped patterns of behavior (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). ASD affects 2% of all children between the ages of 6 and 17 (Blumberg et al, 2013). Deficits in use of language, semantic processing, and interpreting language in context, are universal in ASD patients (Howlin, 2003). Language ability is the earliest positive prognostic indicator in children with ASD, but is closely related to long-term social function. Improved understanding of the brain organization underlying language may shed light on the neural basis of ASD and factors related to clinical severity (Kleinhans et al, 2008). The identification of biomarkers in ASD in language network would be helpful in ensuring an early and accurate diagnosis as well as optimizing effective treatments
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