Visual attention in autism families: 'unaffected' sibs share atypical frontal activation
Visual attention in autism families: 'unaffected' sibs share atypical frontal activation
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02153.x
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发表时间：
2010-03-01
影响因子：
7.6
通讯作者：
Baron-Cohen, Simon
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Belmonte, Matthew K.;Gomot, Marie;Baron-Cohen, Simon
背景：除了临床上较为明显的社会认知异常外，患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASC)的人还表现出注意力和感觉的紊乱，这可能为深入了解潜在的神经异常提供线索。在没有诊断的ASC亲属中，类似的自闭症特征表明临床上受影响的家庭成员和未受影响的家庭成员之间存在连续性。方法：我们将fMRI应用于视觉注意的非社会任务，以确定这种连续性是否在大脑生理学水平上持续存在。结果：患有ASC的男孩和ASC患者的临床未受影响的兄弟姐妹都在一项视觉注意力分散任务中受损，该任务要求从快速且同时呈现的、空间分离的刺激和抑制空间干扰干扰中连接属性。此外，与对照组相比，两组受试者均表现出额叶-小脑的非典型激活，这是分心物一致性的函数，额叶非典型性的程度与ASC和SIBS的自闭症特征的心理测量学测量相关。尽管ASC组和同胞组之间有这些相似之处，但对大脑区域之间的相关性进行的探索性、假说生成分析显示，只有ASC组而不是同胞组的总体功能相关性有所下降。结论：这些结果建立了家族性ASC易感性的神经生理学关联，并表明虽然额叶激活的异常时间进程可能反映了自闭症大脑发育的许可过程，但更广泛的脑区功能关联的异常模式可能与自闭症的决定因素更密切地相关。
Background: In addition to their more clinically evident abnormalities of social cognition, people with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) manifest perturbations of attention and sensory perception which may offer insights into the underlying neural abnormalities. Similar autistic traits in ASC relatives without a diagnosis suggest a continuity between clinically affected and unaffected family members. Methods: We applied fMRI in the context of a non-social task of visual attention in order to determine whether this continuity persists at the level of brain physiology. Results: Both boys with ASC and clinically unaffected brothers of people with ASC were impaired at a visual divided-attention task demanding conjunction of attributes from rapidly and simultaneously presented, spatially disjoint stimuli and suppression of spatially intervening distractors. In addition, both groups in comparison to controls manifested atypical fronto-cerebellar activation as a function of distractor congruence, and the degree of this frontal atypicality correlated with psychometric measures of autistic traits in ASC and sibs. Despite these resemblances between the ASC and sib groups, an exploratory, hypothesis-generating analysis of correlations across brain regions revealed a decrease in overall functional correlation only in the ASC group and not in the sibs. Conclusions: These results establish a neurophysiological correlate of familial susceptibility to ASC, and suggest that whilst abnormal time courses of frontal activation may reflect processes permissive of autistic brain development, abnormal patterns of functional correlation across a wider array of brain regions may relate more closely to autism's determinants.