Abstract
Some individuals with autism spectrum (AS) perform better on visual reasoning tasks than would be predicted by their general cognitive performance. In individuals with AS, mechanisms in the brain’s visual area that underlie visual processing play a more prominent role in visual reasoning tasks than they do in normal individuals. In addition, increased connectivity with the visual area is thought to be one of the neural bases of autistic visual cognitive abilities. However, the contribution of such brain connectivity to visual cognitive abilities is not well understood, particularly in children. In this study, we investigated how functional connectivity between the visual areas and higher-order regions, which is reflected by alpha, beta and gamma band oscillations, contributes to the performance of visual reasoning tasks in typically developing (TD) (n = 18) children and AS children (n = 18). Brain activity was measured using a custom child-sized magneto-encephalograph. Imaginary coherence analysis was used as a proxy to estimate the functional connectivity between the occipital and other areas of the brain. Stronger connectivity from the occipital area, as evidenced by higher imaginary coherence in the gamma band, was associated with higher performance in the AS children only. We observed no significant correlation between the alpha or beta bands imaginary coherence and performance in the both groups. Alpha and beta bands reflect top-down pathways, while gamma band oscillations reflect a bottom-up influence. Therefore, our results suggest that visual reasoning in AS children is at least partially based on an enhanced reliance on visual perception and increased bottom-up connectivity from the visual areas.
Highlights
Autism spectrum (AS) manifests in early childhood as delayed, impaired, or atypical social interactions and communication, as well as a narrowing in the range of interests
There was no significant difference in alpha band (7–12 Hz), beta band (13–29 Hz), or gamma band (30–58 Hz) imaginary coherence (ImCoh) for any sensor pair between typically developing (TD) and AS children, using a conservative alpha level of 0.00034 (S4 Fig)
There was no difference in the number of correct answers between TD and AS children (t = 0.18, P > 0.05; Fig 3A) nor in the efficiency index (t = 0.38, P > 0.05; Fig 3D), whereas the response time was shorter for AS children than TD children both for all responses (t = 2.11, P = 0.042; Fig 3B) and for correct responses (t = 2.22, P = 0.034; Fig 3C)
Summary
Autism spectrum (AS) manifests in early childhood as delayed, impaired, or atypical social interactions and communication, as well as a narrowing in the range of interests. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during RSPM solving shows an increased reliance on extrastriate cortical areas, and decreased reliance on the prefrontal cortex in AS participants relative to non-AS individuals [5, 6]. Mental rotation is another visual reasoning ability in which AS individuals are better than non-AS individuals. These findings, which can be generalized to a large array of tasks [9], may reflect “visual thinking” [10, 11] as well as an enhanced role of perception in intelligence [5, 6]
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