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. 2016 Apr;46(4):1477-89.
doi: 10.1007/s10803-015-2667-3.

Brief Report: Reduced Temporal-Central EEG Alpha Coherence During Joint Attention Perception in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Mark Jaime  1   2 , Camilla M McMahon  3   4 , Bridget C Davidson  5   4 , Lisa C Newell  6   4 , Peter C Mundy  7   4 , Heather A Henderson  8   4
Affiliations

Brief Report: Reduced Temporal-Central EEG Alpha Coherence During Joint Attention Perception in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Mark Jaime et al. J Autism Dev Disord. 2016 Apr.

Abstract

Although prior studies have demonstrated reduced resting state EEG coherence in adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), no studies have explored the nature of EEG coherence during joint attention. We examined the EEG coherence of the joint attention network in adolescents with and without ASD during congruent and incongruent joint attention perception and an eyes-open resting condition. Across conditions, adolescents with ASD showed reduced right hemisphere temporal-central alpha coherence compared to typically developing adolescents. Greater right temporal-central alpha coherence during joint attention was positively associated with social cognitive performance in typical development but not in ASD. These results suggest that, in addition to a resting state, EEG coherence during joint attention perception is reduced in ASD.

Keywords: Adolescent autistic brain; Adolescents with ASD; Brain connectivity; Cortical connectivity; EEG coherence; Joint attention; Joint attention network connectivity; Neurocognitive features of joint attention in ASD.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Screen captures for the congruent gaze (left) and incongruent gaze (right) joint attention eliciting videos. Boxes represent the areas of interest which comprise the corners (a) and the face (b).
Figure 2
Figure 2
A top view illustration of electrode pairs used to compute coherence for left and right frontal–parietal (solid lines), temporal–central (dotted lines), temporal–parietal (dashed lines), and frontal–occipital (dashed and dotted lines) cortical areas.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean alpha coherence (and standard error) per region and diagnostic group. F-P (frontal-parietal), F-O (frontal-occipital), T-P (temporal-parietal), T-C (temporal-central).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Right temporal-central EEG alpha coherence as a function of scores on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes test.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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