Increased Functional Connectivity Between Subcortical and Cortical Resting-State Networks in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Open accessAbstract
IMPORTANCE: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit severe difficulties in social interaction, motor coordination, behavioral flexibility, and atypical sensory processing, with considerable interindividual variability. This heterogeneous set of symptoms recently led to investigating the presence of abnormalities in the interaction across large-scale brain networks. To date, studies have focused either on constrained sets of brain regions or whole-brain analysis, rather than focusing on the interaction between brain networks. OBJECTIVES: To compare the intrinsic functional connectivity between brain networks in a large sample of individuals with ASD and typically developing control subjects and to estimate to what extent group differences would predict autistic traits and reflect different developmental trajectories. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: We studied 166 male individuals (mean age, 17.6 years; age range, 7-50 years) diagnosed as having DSM-IV-TR autism or Asperger syndrome and 193 typical developing male individuals (mean age, 16.9 years; age range, 6.5-39.4 years) using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Participants were matched for age, IQ, head motion, and eye status (open or closed) in the MRI scanner. We analyzed data from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE), an aggregated MRI data set from 17 centers, made public in August 2012. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: We estimated correlations between time courses of brain networks extracted using a data-driven method (independent component analysis). Subsequently, we associated estimates of interaction strength between networks with age and autistic traits indexed by the Social Responsiveness Scale. RESULTS: Relative to typically developing control participants, individuals with ASD showed increased functional connectivity between primary sensory networks and subcortical networks (thalamus and basal ganglia) (all t ≥ 3.13, P < .001 corrected). The strength of such connections was associated with the severity of autistic traits in the ASD group (all r ≥ 0.21, P < .0067 corrected). In addition, subcortico-cortical interaction decreased with age in the entire sample (all r ≤ -0.09, P < .012 corrected), although this association was significant only in typically developing participants (all r ≤ -0.13, P < .009 corrected). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Our results showing ASD-related impairment in the interaction between primary sensory cortices and subcortical regions suggest that the sensory processes they subserve abnormally influence brain information processing in individuals with ASD. This might contribute to the occurrence of hyposensitivity or hypersensitivity and of difficulties in top-down regulation of behavior.
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Subcortical-cortical connectivity has been shown to be altered in ASD.
“sub-cortical cortical connectivity has been shown to be altered 55,57”
From Subtyping cognitive profiles in Autism Spectrum Disorder using a Functional Random Forest algorithm (2018) · cites this paper as [57]
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- Authors
- Cerliani, L., Mennes, M., Thomas, R. M., Di Martino, A., Thioux, M., & Keysers, C.
- Affiliations
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NL)
- Radboud University Nijmegen (NL)
- Autism Spectrum Disorder Research and Clinical Program and Phyllis Green and Randolph Cowen Institute for Pediatric Neuroscience at The Child Study Center, New York University Langone Medical Center, New York
- Venue
- JAMA Psychiatry
- Publisher
- American Medical Association (AMA)
- Published
- 2015-08-01
- Volume
- 72
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 767
- ISSN
- 2168-622X (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5008437
- OpenAlex
- W1823252948
- Cited by
- 339
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 26 · 2025: 29 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 43 · 2020: 32 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 21 · 2015: 3
- FWCI
- 16.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- pure.knaw.nl
- Licence
- other-oa
- Locations
- JAMA Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- KNAW research portal (Royal Academy of Art and Sciences (KNAW)) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- KNAW Research Portal (The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Radboud Repository (Radboud University) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (CDA13-017)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetics and Neurodevelopmental Disorders
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, Asperger syndrome, resting-state functional connectivity, thalamus, basal ganglia, autistic traits, Social Responsiveness Scale, independent component analysis, brain network interactions, developmental trajectories, age differences, sensory processing, ABIDE dataset, interindividual variability
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Brain, Child, Child Development Disorders, Pervasive, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Neural Pathways, Rest, Case-Control Studies, Young Adult, Functional Neuroimaging
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