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. 2013 Nov 14;5(3):567-72.
doi: 10.1016/j.celrep.2013.10.003. Epub 2013 Nov 7.

Local functional overconnectivity in posterior brain regions is associated with symptom severity in autism spectrum disorders

Christopher Lee Keown  1 , Patricia Shih, Aarti Nair, Nick Peterson, Mark Edward Mulvey, Ralph-Axel Müller
Affiliations

Local functional overconnectivity in posterior brain regions is associated with symptom severity in autism spectrum disorders

Christopher Lee Keown et al. Cell Rep. .

Abstract

Although growing evidence indicates atypical long-distance connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), much less is known about local connectivity, despite conjectures that local overconnectivity may be causally involved in the disorder. Using functional connectivity MRI and graph theory, we found that local functional connectivity was atypically increased in adolescents with ASD in temporo-occipital regions bilaterally. Posterior overconnectivity was found to be associated with higher ASD symptom severity, whereas an ASD subsample with low severity showed frontal underconnectivity. The findings suggest links between symptomatology and local connectivity, which vary within the autism spectrum.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. WITHIN- AND BETWEEN-GROUP MAPS FOR LOCAL CONNECTION DENSITY
Surface renderings of local connectivity density for (A) TD and (B) ASD groups. Greater z-scores correspond to brain regions with high connectivity (red-scale). Clusters of significant group differences in local degrees (p<.05, corr.) for (C) entire ASD cohort, as well as for (D) higher severity and (E) low severity ASD subgroups, in comparison to the TD group (warm colors: ASD > TD; cool colors TD > ASD).
Figure 2
Figure 2. CORRELATIONS BETWEEN LOCAL CONNECTION DENSITY AND SYMPTOM SEVERITY
Correlation between average local degrees in clusters of significant group differences (all clusters in Figure 1D–E combined) with ADOS social (A) and repetitive behavior scores (B) in the ASD group.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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