Prolonged Functional Connections in Autism

An US cohort study showed that prolonged temporal synchrony of functional brain connections is reproducibly observed in autism. The study included male autism (n = 52, mean age 27.73 years) and typically developing individuals (n = 38, 27.09 years) between December 2016 and April 2018. Increases in both sustained and functional brain connectivity at several lags were found in individuals with autism compared with the control group. Group differences in functional connectivity were replicated in a larger data set at a 6-second lag. Measures of symptom severity in individuals with autism were positively associated with sustained connectivity values. In the control group, sustained connectivity was negatively associated with cognitive processing. A replication sample (n = 1402) of individuals with autism and control was also analyzed. The findings suggest that persistence of brain connectivity in autism may limit the ability to rapidly shift from one brain state to another and contribute to the pathophysiology of autism. Source: https://jamanetwork.com/