Abstract
Social impairments are a hallmark of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), but empirical evidence for early brain network alterations in response to social stimuli is scant in ASD. We recorded the gaze patterns and brain activity of toddlers with ASD and their typically developing peers while they explored dynamic social scenes. Directed functional connectivity analyses based on electrical source imaging revealed frequency specific network atypicalities in the theta and alpha frequency bands, manifesting as alterations in both the driving and the connections from key nodes of the social brain associated with autism. Analyses of brain-behavioural relationships within the ASD group suggested that compensatory mechanisms from dorsomedial frontal, inferior temporal and insular cortical regions were associated with less atypical gaze patterns and lower clinical impairment. Our results provide strong evidence that directed functional connectivity alterations of social brain networks is a core component of atypical brain development at early stages of ASD.
Highlights
Preferential attention to social cues is a fundamental mechanism that facilitates interactions with other human beings
To understand the functional wiring and the dynamic flow underlying the processing of the dynamic social stimuli, we used a data-driven method to explore in which frequency band the highest summed outflow occurred in 82 region of interest (ROI) across the whole brain
Using data-driven methods, we observed aberrant gaze patterns together with frequency specific alterations in the directed functional connectivity in toddlers and preschoolers with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) when exploring dynamic social stimuli compared to their TD peers
Summary
Preferential attention to social cues is a fundamental mechanism that facilitates interactions with other human beings. The brain develops a network of cerebral regions specialized in understanding the social behaviours of others This network includes the orbitofrontal and medial prefrontal cortices, the superior temporal cortex, the temporal poles, the amygdala, the precuneus, the temporo-parietal junction, the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the insula (Brothers, 1990; Frith and Frith, 2010; Adolphs, 2009; Blakemore, 2008). These areas form the social brain and are all implicated to some extent in processing social cues and encoding human social behaviours (Brothers, 1990; Frith and Frith, 2010; Adolphs, 2009; Blakemore, 2008)
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