The imaginary part of coherency in autism: differences in cortical functional connectivity in preschool children

PLoS One. 2013 Oct 1;8(10):e75941. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075941. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Cognition arises from the transient integration and segregation of activity across functionally distinct brain areas. Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), which encompass a wide range of developmental disabilities, have been presumed to be associated with a problem in cortical and sub-cortical dynamics of coordinated activity, often involving enhanced local but decreased long range coordination over areas of integration. In this paper we challenge this idea by presenting results from a relatively large population of ASD children and age-matched controls during a face-processing task. Over most of the explored domain, children with ASD exhibited enhanced synchronization, although finer detail reveals specific enhancement/reduction of synchrony depending on time, frequency and brain site. Our results are derived from the use of the imaginary part of coherency, a measure which is not susceptible to volume conduction artifacts and therefore presents a credible picture of coordinated brain activity. We also present evidence that this measure is a good candidate to provide features in building a classifier to be used as a potential biomarker for autism.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Autistic Disorder / physiopathology*
  • Brain / physiopathology*
  • Child, Preschool
  • Electroencephalography
  • Evoked Potentials
  • Humans
  • Nerve Net / physiopathology*
  • Time Factors

Grants and funding

This research was made possible by the generous support of the Harris Steel Foundation and the Harris family, which made it possible to create the Milton and Ethel Harris Research Initiative (www.mehri.ca). The authors have also received support from the Unicorn Foundation, Cure Autism Now, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Templeton Foundation, York University, and the facilities of the Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET: www.sharcnet.ca) and Compute/Calcul Canada. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.