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Functional assays of local connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of individuals with autism.

ABSTRACT: Emerging evidence for differences between individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals in somatic processing and brain response to touch suggests somatosensory cortex as a promising substrate for elucidating differences in functional brain connectivity between individuals with and without autism. Signals from adjacent digits project to neighboring locations or representations in somatosensory cortex. When a digit is stimulated, i.e. touched, its representation in cortex is directly activated; local intracortical connections indirectly activate nonprimary cortical representations corresponding to adjacent digits. The response of the nonprimary cortical representations is thus a proxy for connection strength. Local overconnectivity in autism implies that the nonprimary/primary response ratios of the ASD group will be higher than those of the NT group. D1 and D2 of the dominant hand of the participant were individually stimulated while we recorded neural responses using magnetoencephalography. The cortical representations of D1 and D2 (somatosensory-evoked fields) were computed from the ensemble-averaged data using (a) dipole model fits and (b) singular value decomposition. Individual adjacent/primary response ratios were measured, and group response ratio data were fitted with straight lines. Local overconnectivity in autism implies steeper ASD vs. NT group slopes. Our findings did not support local overconnectivity. Slopes were found to be significantly shallower for the ASD group than the NT group. Our findings support the idea of local underconnectivity in the somatosensory cortex of the brains of individuals with ASD.

SUBMITTER: Coskun MA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3661715 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Functional assays of local connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of individuals with autism.

Coskun Mehmet Akif MA Loveland Katherine A KA Pearson Deborah A DA Papanicolaou Andrew C AC Sheth Bhavin R BR

Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research 20130220 3

Emerging evidence for differences between individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and neurotypical (NT) individuals in somatic processing and brain response to touch suggests somatosensory cortex as a promising substrate for elucidating differences in functional brain connectivity between individuals with and without autism. Signals from adjacent digits project to neighboring locations or representations in somatosensory cortex. When a digit is stimulated, i.e. touched, its representatio ...[more]

PMID: 23427110

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Project description:Functional connectivity is abnormal in autism, but the nature of these abnormalities remains elusive. Different studies, mostly using functional magnetic resonance imaging, have found increased, decreased, or even mixed pattern functional connectivity abnormalities in autism, but no unifying framework has emerged to date. We measured functional connectivity in individuals with autism and in controls using magnetoencephalography, which allowed us to resolve both the directionality (feedforward versus feedback) and spatial scale (local or long-range) of functional connectivity. Specifically, we measured the cortical response and functional connectivity during a passive 25-Hz vibrotactile stimulation in the somatosensory cortex of 20 typically developing individuals and 15 individuals with autism, all males and right-handed, aged 8-18, and the mu-rhythm during resting state in a subset of these participants (12 per group, same age range). Two major significant group differences emerged in the response to the vibrotactile stimulus. First, the 50-Hz phase locking component of the cortical response, generated locally in the primary (S1) and secondary (S2) somatosensory cortex, was reduced in the autism group (P < 0.003, corrected). Second, feedforward functional connectivity between S1 and S2 was increased in the autism group (P < 0.004, corrected). During resting state, there was no group difference in the mu-α rhythm. In contrast, the mu-β rhythm, which has been associated with feedback connectivity, was significantly reduced in the autism group (P < 0.04, corrected). Furthermore, the strength of the mu-β was correlated to the relative strength of 50 Hz component of the response to the vibrotactile stimulus (r = 0.78, P < 0.00005), indicating a shared aetiology for these seemingly unrelated abnormalities. These magnetoencephalography-derived measures were correlated with two different behavioural sensory processing scores (P < 0.01 and P < 0.02 for the autism group, P < 0.01 and P < 0.0001 for the typical group), with autism severity (P < 0.03), and with diagnosis (89% accuracy). A biophysically realistic computational model using data driven feedforward and feedback parameters replicated the magnetoencephalography data faithfully. The direct observation of both abnormally increased and abnormally decreased functional connectivity in autism occurring simultaneously in different functional connectivity streams, offers a potential unifying framework for the unexplained discrepancies in current findings. Given that cortical feedback, whether local or long-range, is intrinsically non-linear, while cortical feedforward is generally linear relative to the stimulus, the present results suggest decreased non-linearity alongside an increased veridical component of the cortical response in autism.

Dataset Information

Functional assays of local connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of individuals with autism.

Publications

Functional assays of local connectivity in the somatosensory cortex of individuals with autism.

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