scholarly journals Resting state arousal and functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorder

2015 ◽  
Vol 113 (9) ◽  
pp. 3035-3037
Author(s):  
Johan Lundin Kleberg

A recent study (Eilam-Stock T, Xu P, Cao M, Gu X, Van Dam NT, Anagnostou E, Kolevzon A, Soorya L, Park Y, Siller M, He Y, Hof PR, Fan J. Brain 137: 153–171, 2014) demonstrated that resting state electrodermal activity is correlated with different patterns of brain activity in subjects with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than in typical controls. These results are considered in light of theories of atypical arousal in ASD.

2015 ◽  
Vol 72 (8) ◽  
pp. 767 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonardo Cerliani ◽  
Maarten Mennes ◽  
Rajat M. Thomas ◽  
Adriana Di Martino ◽  
Marc Thioux ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Jinlong Hu ◽  
Lijie Cao ◽  
Tenghui Li ◽  
Bin Liao ◽  
Shoubin Dong ◽  
...  

Deep neural networks have recently been applied to the study of brain disorders such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with great success. However, the internal logics of these networks are difficult to interpret, especially with regard to how specific network architecture decisions are made. In this paper, we study an interpretable neural network model as a method to identify ASD participants from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data and interpret results of the model in a precise and consistent manner. First, we propose an interpretable fully connected neural network (FCNN) to classify two groups, ASD versus healthy controls (HC), based on input data from resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between regions of interests (ROIs). The proposed FCNN model is a piecewise linear neural network (PLNN) which uses piecewise linear function LeakyReLU as its activation function. We experimentally compared the FCNN model against widely used classification models including support vector machine (SVM), random forest, and two new classes of deep neural network models in a large dataset containing 871 subjects from ABIDE I database. The results show the proposed FCNN model achieves the highest classification accuracy. Second, we further propose an interpreting method which could explain the trained model precisely with a precise linear formula for each input sample and decision features which contributed most to the classification of ASD versus HC participants in the model. We also discuss the implications of our proposed approach for fMRI data classification and interpretation.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Di ◽  
Bharat B Biswal

Background: Males are more likely to suffer from autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than females. As to whether females with ASD have similar brain alterations remain an open question. The current study aimed to examine sex-dependent as well as sex-independent alterations in resting-state functional connectivity in individuals with ASD compared with typically developing (TD) individuals. Method: Resting-state functional MRI data were acquired from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE). Subjects between 6 to 20 years of age were included for analysis. After matching the intelligence quotient between groups for each dataset, and removing subjects due to excessive head motion, the resulting effective sample contained 28 females with ASD, 49 TD females, 129 males with ASD, and 141 TD males, with a two (diagnosis) by two (sex) design. Functional connectivity among 153 regions of interest (ROIs) comprising the whole brain was computed. Two by two analysis of variance was used to identify connectivity that showed diagnosis by sex interaction or main effects of diagnosis. Results: The main effects of diagnosis were found mainly between visual cortex and other brain regions, indicating sex-independent connectivity alterations. We also observed two connections whose connectivity showed diagnosis by sex interaction between the precuneus and medial cerebellum as well as the precunes and dorsal frontal cortex. While males with ASD showed higher connectivity in these connections compared with TD males, females with ASD had lower connectivity than their counterparts. Conclusions: Both sex-dependent and sex-independent functional connectivity alterations are present in ASD.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Štefan Holiga ◽  
Joerg F. Hipp ◽  
Christopher H. Chatham ◽  
Pilar Garces ◽  
Will Spooren ◽  
...  

AbstractDespite the high clinical burden little is known about pathophysiology underlying autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) studies have found atypical synchronization of brain activity in ASD. However, no consensus has been reached on the nature and clinical relevance of these alterations. Here we address these questions in the most comprehensive, large-scale effort to date comprising evaluation of four large ASD cohorts. We followed a strict exploration and replication procedure to identify core rs-fMRI functional connectivity (degree centrality) alterations associated with ASD as compared to typically developing (TD) controls (ASD: N=841, TD: N=984). We then tested for associations of these imaging phenotypes with clinical and demographic factors such as age, sex, medication status and clinical symptom severity. We find reproducible patterns of ASD-associated functional hyper- and hypo-connectivity with hypo-connectivity being primarily restricted to sensory-motor regions and hyper-connectivity hubs being predominately located in prefrontal and parietal cortices. We establish shifts in between-network connectivity from outside to within the identified regions as a key driver of these abnormalities. The magnitude of these alterations is linked to core ASD symptoms related to communication and social interaction and is not affected by age, sex or medication status. The identified brain functional alterations provide a reproducible pathophysiological phenotype underlying the diagnosis of ASD reconciling previous divergent findings. The large effect sizes in standardized cohorts and the link to clinical symptoms emphasize the importance of the identified imaging alterations as potential treatment and stratification biomarkers for ASD.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilma Matthysen ◽  
Daniele Marinazzo ◽  
Roma Siugzdaite

Background. Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder, marked by impairment in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, or activities. Accumulating data suggests that alterations in functional connectivity might contribute to these deficits. Whereas functional connectivity in resting state fMRI is expressed by several resting-state networks, for this study we examined several of them, but our particular interest was in the default mode network (DMN), given its age dependent alteration of functional connectivity and its relation to social communication. Methods. Since the studies investigating young children (6-8 years) with autism have found hypo-connectivity in DMN and studies on adolescents (12-16 years old) with autism have found hyper-connectivity in the DMN, we were interested in connectivity pattern during the age of 8 to 12, so we investigated the role of altered intrinsic connectivity in 16 children (mean age 9.75 ±1.6 years) with autism spectrum disorder compared to 16 typically developing controls in the DMN and other resting-state networks. Results. Results show that, compared to controls, the group with autism spectrum disorder showed signs of both hypo- and hyper-connectivity in different regions of the resting-state networks related to social communication. Conclusion. That suggests that transition period from childhood to adolescence carries the complexity of functional connectivity from both age groups. Regions that showed differences in functional connectivity were discussed in relation to social communication difficulties.


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