Abnormalities of Intrinsic Functional Connectivity in Autism Spectrum Disorders

By Christopher S. Monk, Scott J. Peltier, Jillian Lee Wiggins, Shih-Jen Weng, Melisa Carrasco, Susan Risi, Catherine Lord. NeuroImage, 2009

598 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) impact social functioning and communication, and individuals with these disorders often have restrictive and repetitive behaviors. Accumulating data indicate that ASD is associated with alterations of neural circuitry. Functional MRI (FMRI) studies have focused on connectivity in the context of psychological tasks. However, even in the absence of a task, the brain exhibits a high degree of functional connectivity, known as intrinsic or resting connectivity. Notably, the default network, which includes the posterior cingulate cortex, retro-splenial, lateral parietal cortex/angular gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal gyrus, temporal lobe, and parahippocampal gyrus, is strongly active when there is no task. Altered intrinsic connectivity within the default network may underlie offline processing that may actuate ASD impairments. Using FMRI, we sought to evaluate intrinsic connectivity within the default network in ASD. Relative to controls, the ASD group showed weaker connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and superior frontal gyrus and stronger connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and both the right temporal lobe and right parahippocampal gyrus. Moreover, poorer social functioning in the ASD group was correlated with weaker connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and the superior frontal gyrus. In addition, more severe restricted and repetitive behaviors in ASD were correlated with stronger connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and right parahippocampal gyrus. These findings indicate that ASD subjects show altered intrinsic connectivity within the default network, and connectivity between these structures is associated with specific ASD symptoms.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4946f3f23b8b18136e4d30f021657149e754fa0f

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Citations in the corpus

The ESSENCE in child psychiatry: Early Symptomatic Syndromes Eliciting Neurodevelopmental Clinical Examinations. (2010, background): “These areas constitute a functional network, ‘‘the default network’’, which appears to be critically differently functioning in ASD (Buckner & Vincent, 2007; Iacoboni, 2006; Monk et al., 2009).”
State-space model with deep learning for functional dynamics estimation in resting-state fMRI (2016, unknown): “…Cognitive Impairment (MCI) (Rombouts et al., 2005; Sorg et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2007; Zhang et al., 2012; Chase, 2014), autism spectrum disorder (Monk et al., 2009; Khan et al., 2013), schizophrenia (Liang et al., 2006; Zhou et al., 2007; Garrity et al., 2007; Lynall et al., 2010), and…”
Can structure predict function in the human brain? (2010, unknown): “Diminutions of FC magnitude have been detected in ADHD (Castellanos et al., 2008) as well as autism (Kennedy and Courchesne, 2008; Monk et al., 2009), whereas increased FC, in particular between DMN regions and the subgenual cingulate, has been reported in cases of depression (Greicius et al.,…”
Structural foundations of resting-state and task-based functional connectivity in the human brain (2013, background): “These results provide further insight into the structural mechanisms that could contribute to the altered FC observed in neurological disorders (33, 34).”
Abnormal functional connectivity of default mode sub-networks in autism spectrum disorder patients (2010, background): “To our knowledge, only two fMRI studies to date have tested resting state connectivity in ASD (Kennedy and Courchesne, 2008b; Monk et al., 2009).”
The role of the posterior cingulate cortex in cognition and disease. (2014, background): “, 2006), although more complex patterns of functional connectivity abnormality have also been reported (Monk et al., 2009).”
Deriving reproducible biomarkers from multi‐site resting‐state data: An Autism‐based example (2016, result): “Our findings are concordant with (Monk et al., 2009) that observed lower fronto-parietal connectivity and stronger connectivity between temporal ROIs.”
Data Quality Influences Observed Links Between Functional Connectivity and Behavior (2017, background): “Early R-fMRI studies of ASD identified numerous FC abnormalities, primarily, reduced correlations (Cherkassky et al. 2006; Monk et al. 2009; Jones et al. 2010).”
Graph theoretical analysis of structural and functional connectivity MRI in normal and pathological brain networks (2010, unknown): “for developmental connectivity alteration [93,94].”