Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity

Abstract The superior temporal sulcus (STS) forms a key region for social information processing and disruptions of its function have been associated with socio-communicative impairments characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Task-based fMRI was applied in 15 adults with ASD and 15 match...

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Autores principales:	Kaat Alaerts, Stephan P. Swinnen, Nicole Wenderoth
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Nature Portfolio 2017
Materias:	Medicine R Science Q
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6d82c432a5e441d4a77a6e5c2f55c848
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6d82c432a5e441d4a77a6e5c2f55c8482021-12-02T16:07:47ZNeural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity10.1038/s41598-017-05786-z2045-2322https://doaj.org/article/6d82c432a5e441d4a77a6e5c2f55c8482017-07-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-05786-zhttps://doaj.org/toc/2045-2322Abstract The superior temporal sulcus (STS) forms a key region for social information processing and disruptions of its function have been associated with socio-communicative impairments characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Task-based fMRI was applied in 15 adults with ASD and 15 matched typical-controls (TC) to explore differences in activity and effective connectivity of STS while discriminating either ‘intact’ versus ‘scrambled’ biological motion point light displays (explicit processing) or responding to a color-change while the ‘intact’ versus ‘scrambled’ nature of the stimulus was irrelevant for the task (implicit processing). STS responded stronger to ‘intact’ than ‘scrambled’ stimuli in both groups, indicating that the basic encoding of ‘biological’ versus ‘non-biological’ motion seems to be intact in ASD. Only in the TC-group however, explicit attention to the biological motion content induced an augmentation of STS-activity, which was not observed in the ASD-group. Overall, these findings suggest an inadequacy to recruit STS upon task demand in ASD, rather than a generalized alteration in STS neural processing. The importance of attention orienting for recruiting relevant neural resources was further underlined by the observation that connectivity between STS and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a key region in attention regulation, effectively modulated STS-recruitment in the ASD-group.Kaat AlaertsStephan P. SwinnenNicole WenderothNature PortfolioarticleMedicineRScienceQENScientific Reports, Vol 7, Iss 1, Pp 1-13 (2017)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Medicine R Science Q
spellingShingle	Medicine R Science Q Kaat Alaerts Stephan P. Swinnen Nicole Wenderoth Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
description	Abstract The superior temporal sulcus (STS) forms a key region for social information processing and disruptions of its function have been associated with socio-communicative impairments characteristic of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Task-based fMRI was applied in 15 adults with ASD and 15 matched typical-controls (TC) to explore differences in activity and effective connectivity of STS while discriminating either ‘intact’ versus ‘scrambled’ biological motion point light displays (explicit processing) or responding to a color-change while the ‘intact’ versus ‘scrambled’ nature of the stimulus was irrelevant for the task (implicit processing). STS responded stronger to ‘intact’ than ‘scrambled’ stimuli in both groups, indicating that the basic encoding of ‘biological’ versus ‘non-biological’ motion seems to be intact in ASD. Only in the TC-group however, explicit attention to the biological motion content induced an augmentation of STS-activity, which was not observed in the ASD-group. Overall, these findings suggest an inadequacy to recruit STS upon task demand in ASD, rather than a generalized alteration in STS neural processing. The importance of attention orienting for recruiting relevant neural resources was further underlined by the observation that connectivity between STS and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), a key region in attention regulation, effectively modulated STS-recruitment in the ASD-group.
format	article
author	Kaat Alaerts Stephan P. Swinnen Nicole Wenderoth
author_facet	Kaat Alaerts Stephan P. Swinnen Nicole Wenderoth
author_sort	Kaat Alaerts
title	Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
title_short	Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
title_full	Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
title_fullStr	Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
title_full_unstemmed	Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
title_sort	neural processing of biological motion in autism: an investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity
publisher	Nature Portfolio
publishDate	2017
url	https://doaj.org/article/6d82c432a5e441d4a77a6e5c2f55c848
work_keys_str_mv	AT kaatalaerts neuralprocessingofbiologicalmotioninautismaninvestigationofbrainactivityandeffectiveconnectivity AT stephanpswinnen neuralprocessingofbiologicalmotioninautismaninvestigationofbrainactivityandeffectiveconnectivity AT nicolewenderoth neuralprocessingofbiologicalmotioninautismaninvestigationofbrainactivityandeffectiveconnectivity
_version_	1718384721996546048

Neural processing of biological motion in autism: An investigation of brain activity and effective connectivity

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