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Brain imaging results in children with ASD. In these lateral views of the brain, regions in green are those that differ significantly in children with autism compared to controls in A) rest regional blood flow measured by PET and in B) concentration of gray matter measured by MRI.
Source publication
Results on brain imaging studies have led to a better understanding of the neural circuits involved in social cognition and its implication in autism spectrum dis- orders (ASD). It has been shown that the superior temporal sulcus (STS) is highly implicated in social processes, from perception of socially relevant information, such as body movements...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... children with autism, PET (positron emission tomo- graphy) and SPECT (single photon emission tomography) studies have described localized bilateral temporal hy- poperfusion. These rest functional abnormalities were centered in the STS and superior temporal gyrus [10,14] ( Figure 2A). In both studies, participants with autism and control groups were matched for age and develop- mental quotients. ...
Context 2
... team per- formed a MRI study using VBM and high-resolution 3D- T1-weighted images acquired from 21 children with au- tism and 12 healthy control children. A significant bilat- eral decrease of grey matter was found in the STS of children with autism [11] (Figure 2B). The major find- ing of this study was the remarkable consistency between the bilateral temporal abnormalities found in autistic children by three independent MRI, PET [14] and SPECT studies [10]. ...
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Citations
... Increases in the superior temporal gyrus (STG) have been commonly reported in autism 30,31,35,54,132-141 . STG and surrounding cortical regions are also repeatedly implicated in autism and known to be involved in cognitive functions that are often impacted (e.g., language) in autistic individuals 25, [142][143][144][145][146] . The present results in ADHD were much more widespread and less localised than in autism. ...
Background
Autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are heterogeneous neurodevelopmental conditions with complex underlying neurobiology. Despite overlapping presentation and sex-biased prevalence, autism and ADHD are rarely studied together, and sex differences are often overlooked. Normative modelling provides a unified framework for studying age-specific and sex-specific divergences in neurodivergent brain development.
Methods
Here we use normative modelling and a large, multi-site neuroimaging dataset to characterise cortical anatomy associated with autism and ADHD, benchmarked against models of typical brain development based on a sample of over 75,000 individuals. We also examined sex and age differences, relationship with autistic traits, and explored the co-occurrence of autism and ADHD (autism+ADHD).
Results
We observed robust neuroanatomical signatures of both autism and ADHD. Overall, autistic individuals showed greater cortical thickness and volume localised to the superior temporal cortex, whereas individuals with ADHD showed more global effects of cortical thickness increases but lower cortical volume and surface area across much of the cortex. The autism+ADHD group displayed a unique pattern of widespread increases in cortical thickness, and certain decreases in surface area. We also found evidence that sex modulates the neuroanatomy of autism but not ADHD, and an age-by-diagnosis interaction for ADHD only.
Conclusions
These results indicate distinct cortical differences in autism and ADHD that are differentially impacted by age, sex, and potentially unique patterns related to their co-occurrence.
... This heterogeneity at the behavioral level could be the consequence of a distinct cortical network of MSI, as all studies using neuroimaging techniques demonstrated that sensory merging in ASD occurred at different topographies and latencies compared to control participants (Brandwein et al., 2013(Brandwein et al., , 2015Molholm et al., 2020;Russo et al., 2010;Stefanou et al., 2020). In addition, structural, anatomic, and functional differences in the superior temporal sulcus, an important site of audiovisual multisensory integration (for a review, see Beauchamp, 2010), have been demonstrated in participants with ASD compared to control participants (for a review, see Zilbovicius et al., 2013). We can add that the authors of the enhanced perceptual functioning model, a well-established ASD model (Mottron and Burack, 2001;Mottron et al., 2006), proposed that cerebral plasticity in low-level brain areas in ASD leads to enhanced activation in these specific brain areas, referred to as 'areas of strength', generating a preference toward a low level of processing. ...
Atypical sensory processing is now considered a diagnostic feature of autism. Although multisensory integration (MSI) may have cascading effects on the development of higher-level skills such as socio-communicative functioning, there is a clear lack of understanding of how autistic individuals integrate multiple sensory inputs. Multisensory dynamic information is a more ecological construct than static stimuli, reflecting naturalistic sensory experiences given that our environment involves moving stimulation of more than one sensory modality at a time. In particular, depth movement informs about crucial social (approaching to interact) and non-social (avoiding threats/collisions) information. As autistic characteristics are distributed on a spectrum over clinical and general populations, our work aimed to explore the multisensory integration of depth cues in the autistic personality spectrum, using a go/no-go detection task. The autistic profile of 38 participants from the general population was assessed using questionnaires extensively used in the literature. Participants performed a detection task of auditory and/or visual depth moving stimuli compared to static stimuli. We found that subjects with high-autistic traits overreacted to depth movement and exhibited faster reaction times to audiovisual cues, particularly when the audiovisual stimuli were looming and/or were presented at a fast speed. These results provide evidence of sensory particularities in people with high-autistic traits and suggest that low-level stages of multisensory integration could operate differently all along the autistic personality spectrum.
... Presence of areas involved in voice and face recognition, gaze perception, and theory of mind confirms the importance of the right superior temporal cortex in social cognition (25). Right hemispheric dominance for language and autistic children who previously have been reported to show anatomical and functional abnormalities in the STS (26). Asymmetry in the development of the temporal lobe has been demonstrated anatomically and with MRI, with the right side developing earlier than the left (27). ...
Introduction and Aim: Appearance of sulci and its number in the fetal cerebrum is a signal of growth and development. Chronological appearance and symmetrical development of sulci corresponds to gestational age of fetus. Few sulci can be visualized in the prenatal period to judge the growth of fetus. Any change in chronological appearance, symmetry and number of sulci in fetal cerebrum is of prime importance. Materials and Methods: Hundred and six cerebral hemispheres of 53 fetal brains of different gestational ages were collected from MGM Hospital Kalamboli and Aurangabad after institutional ethical approval to study the pattern of sulci on both sides after fixing in 10% formalin. Results: In 6 (5.6 %) cerebral hemispheres variation in appearance of sulci was observed. It was noted that there is change in number of superior temporal sulcus (STS), superior frontal sulcus (SFS), parieto-occipital sulcus (POS), calcarine sulcus (CS) and occipitotemporal sulcus (OTS) on both the sides in 6 cerebral hemispheres. Remaining 100 cerebral hemisphere showed normal, symmetrical appearance and number of sulci. Conclusion: It was observed that the fetal cerebral hemispheres which showed variations in appearance and number of sulci were associated with mother having eclampsia.
... In humans, the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) is a cortical locus for processing the dynamic aspects of faces [18]. The pSTS in the right hemisphere plays an important role in social perception [19]. In ASD, a neuroimaging study indicated that the right pSTS was abnormally activated during emotion perception [20]. ...
Individuals with autism-like traits (ALT) belong to a subclinical group with similar social deficits as autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Their main social deficits include atypical eye contact and difficulty in understanding facial expressions, both of which are associated with an abnormality of the right posterior superior temporal sulcus (rpSTS). It is still undetermined whether it is possible to improve the social function of ALT individuals through noninvasive neural modulation. To this end, we randomly assigned ALT individuals into the real (n=16) and sham (n=16) stimulation groups. All subjects received five consecutive days of intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) on the rpSTS. Eye tracking data and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired on the first and sixth days. The real group showed significant improvement in emotion recognition accuracy after iTBS, but the change was not significantly larger than that in the sham group. Resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the rpSTS and the left cerebellum significantly decreased in the real group than the sham group after iTBS. At baseline, rsFC in the left cerebellum was negatively correlated with emotion recognition accuracy. Our findings indicated that iTBS of the rpSTS could improve emotion perception of ALT individuals by modulating associated neural networks. This stimulation protocol could be a vital therapeutic strategy for the treatment of ASD.
... Also, analysis revealed no relationship between the latency of N1 at P8 when the participants viewed the AW video and SATQ scores. A previous study examined a relationship between cerebral blood flow and neural activity and they showed that the more severe autistic syndrome is, the lower regional cerebral blood flow is in left superior temporal region [17]. The present result might related the low regional cerebral blood flow around left superior temporal sulcus. ...
Previous studies have shown that people with autistic traits have difficulties in motion perception, such as human gait as depicted on a point-light display. A recent study reported that adults with autism spectrum disorders showed atypical visual event-related evoked potentials (ERPs) in response to radial optic flow. To determine the correlation between gait perception and autistic traits in the general population, the present study recorded ERPs time-locked to the onset of approaching and receding point-light walkers. ERPs were measured using an 8-channel system in 19 adults and the correlation between the ERP components and the Subthreshold Autism Trait Questionnaire (SATQ) score were assessed to quantitatively measure autistic traits in the general population. The results showed that the higher SATQ score was, the longer the latency of the ERP component for an approaching walker was. In conclusion, people with autistic traits have trouble perceiving the approach of other people.
... As the STS is thought to have a major role in procession social information, an individual signature of social behavior associated with a neural signature of brain functioning bounded to the STS becomes increasingly relevant 3,5,36 . Indeed, the STS is implicated not only in the perception of biological motion 37,38 but also in the perception of the eyes [39][40][41] , which is a key mechanism of social behavior, as mentioned above. Notably, in social developmental pathologies such as autism spectrum disorders, both anatomo-functional abnormalities within the STS and deficits in eye-gaze perception have been described 42, 43 . ...
Social behavior is extremely variable among individuals, and the neural basis of this variability is still poorly understood. In this study, we aimed to investigate the neural basis of interindividual variability in the first step of social behavior, that is, social perception. For that purpose, we first used eye-tracking to measure social perception during the passive visualization of socially relevant movie clips. Second, we correlated eye-tracking data with measures of rest cerebral blood flow (CBF) obtained using arterial spin-labeling (ASL) MRI, an index of local rest brain function. The results showed a large interindividual variability in the number of fixations to the eyes of characters during passive visualization of movie clips displaying social interactions. Moreover, individual patterns remained stable across time, suggesting an individual signature of social behavior. Whole-brain analyses showed significant positive correlation between the number of fixations to the eyes and rest CBF: individuals who looked more to the eyes were those with higher rest CBF levels within the right superior temporal regions. Our results indicate the existence of a neural and behavioral signature associated with the interindividual variability in social perception.
... Results from eye-tracking studies 1.4. Voice and face: audiovisual integration 49 objectively demonstrate abnormalities in the processing of social information in ASD (Zilbovicius et al., 2013;Wang et al., 2015). ...
Emotions are the fuel of human survival and social development. Not only do we undergo primitive reflexes mediated by ancient brain structures, but we also consciously and unconsciously regulate our emotions in social con- texts, affiliating with friends and distancing from foes. One of our main tools for emotion regulation is facial expression and, in particular, smiles. Smiles are deeply grounded in human behavior: they develop early, and are used across cultures to communicate affective states. The mechanisms that under- lie their cognitive processing include interactions not only with visual, but also emotional and motor systems. Smiles, trigger facial imitation in their observers, reactions thought to be a key component of the human capacity for empathy.Smiles, however, are not only experienced visually, but also have audible consequences. Although visual smiles have been widely studied, almost nothing is known about the cognitive processing of their auditory counter- part. This is the aim of this dissertation. In this work, we characterise and model the smile acousitc fingerprint, and use it to probe how auditory smiles are processed cognitively. We give here evidence that (1) auditory smiles can trigger unconscious facial imitation, that (2) they are cognitively integrated with their visual counterparts during perception, and that (3) the develop- ment of these processes does not depend on pre-learned visual associations. We conclude that the embodied mechanisms associated to the visual process- ing of facial expressions of emotions are in fact equally found in the auditory modality, and that their cognitive development is at least partially indepen- dent from visual experience.
... Results from eye-tracking studies 1.4. Voice and face: audiovisual integration 49 objectively demonstrate abnormalities in the processing of social information in ASD (Zilbovicius et al., 2013;Wang et al., 2015). ...
Emotions are the fuel of human survival and social development. Not onlydo we undergo primitive reflexes mediated by ancient brain structures, butwe also consciously and unconsciously regulate our emotions in social contexts,affiliating with friends and distancing from foes. One of our main toolsfor emotion regulation is facial expression and, in particular, smiles. Smilesare deeply grounded in human behavior: they develop early, and are usedacross cultures to communicate affective states. The mechanisms that underlietheir cognitive processing include interactions not only with visual, butalso emotional and motor systems. Smiles, trigger facial imitation in theirobservers, reactions thought to be a key component of the human capacityfor empathy.Smiles, however, are not only experienced visually, but also have audibleconsequences. Although visual smiles have been widely studied, almostnothing is known about the cognitive processing of their auditory counterpart.This is the aim of this dissertation. In this work, we characterise andmodel the smile acousitc fingerprint, and use it to probe how auditory smilesare processed cognitively. We give here evidence that (1) auditory smiles cantrigger unconscious facial imitation, that (2) they are cognitively integratedwith their visual counterparts during perception, and that (3) the developmentof these processes does not depend on pre-learned visual associations.We conclude that the embodied mechanisms associated to the visual processingof facial expressions of emotions are in fact equally found in the auditorymodality, and that their cognitive development is at least partially independentfrom visual experience.
... Abnormal activity in this structure was previously related to the social cognition deficits observed in autism. It was shown that this brain area is underactive in ASD subjects during face perception, especially when the face stimulus is dynamic (gaze and facial expression shifts) (Redcay 2008, Saitovitch et al. 2012, Zilbovicius et al. 2013. In our study, faces were static but they differed in respect to their expressions, possibly causing the increase of activity in the posterior STS in a majority of the control participants and the lack of such activity in PK. ...
The ability to "read" the information about facial identity, expressed emotions, and intentions is crucial for non-verbal social interaction. Neuroimaging and clinical studies consequently link face perception with fusiform gyrus (FG) and occipital face area (OFA) activity. Here we investigated face processing in an adult, patient PK, diagnosed with both high functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental prosopagnosia (DP). Both disorders have a significant impact on face perception and recognition, thus creating a unique neurodevelopmental condition. We used eye-tracking and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) method. Eye-tracking and fMRI results of PK were compared to results of control subjects. Patient PK showed atypical gaze-fixation strategy during face perception and typical patterns of brain activations in the FG and OFA. However, a significant difference between PK and control subjects was found in the left anterior superior temporal sulcus/middle temporal gyrus (aSTS/MTG). In PK the left aSTS/MTG was hypo-activated in comparison to the control subjects. Additionally, functional connectivity analysis revealed decreased inter-hemispheric connectivity between right and left aSTS/MTG in 'ASD and DP' patient during face recognition performance as compared to the control subjects. The lack of activity in the left aSTS/MTG observed in the case of the clinical subject, combined with the behavioral, eye-tracking, and neuropsychological results, suggests that impairment of the cognitive mechanism of face recognition involves higher level of processing. It seems to be related to insufficient access to semantic knowledge about the person when prompted by face stimuli.
... NeuroImage: Clinical 19 (2018) 38-46 harbors reciprocal neural connections to multiple limbic, paralimbic, and sensory association areas of the brain (Barnes and Pandya, 1992;Seltzer and Pandya, 1994), including the insular cortex Mufson and Mesulam, 1982). The activity of this region of the anterior STS has been associated with multiple processes relevant to social function such as face perception, biological motion perception, and higher-order aspects of social cognition (Adolphs, 2001;Allison et al., 2000;Grossman et al., 2010;Hein and Knight, 2008), all of which are frequently impaired in individuals with ASD Zilbovicius et al., 2013). In the present study, a greater degree of taste reactivity in ASD was predicted by greater food-related activity of the aSTS and greater functional connectivity between the aSTS and gustatory regions of the dorsal mid-insular cortex. ...
... The prominent involvement of the anterior STS, a region associated with functional deficits in other areas of ASD symptomatology (Boddaert et al., 2004;Verhoeven et al., 2010;Zilbovicius et al., 2013), suggests that multiple seemingly distinct symptoms of ASD may share a common neural etiology. Interventions, such as non-invasive brain stimulation or neurofeedback training, specifically targeting the anterior STS (Ramot et al., 2017) might thus prove beneficial for treating a variety of behaviors associated with ASD. ...
Selective or ‘picky’ eating habits are common among those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These behaviors are often related to aberrant sensory experience in individuals with ASD, including heightened reactivity to food taste and texture. However, very little is known about the neural mechanisms that underlie taste reactivity in ASD. In the present study, food-related neural responses were evaluated in 21 young adult and adolescent males diagnosed with ASD without intellectual disability, and 21 typically-developing (TD) controls. Taste reactivity was assessed using the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile, a clinical self-report measure. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to evaluate hemodynamic responses to sweet (vs. neutral) tastants and food pictures. Subjects also underwent resting-state functional connectivity scans.
The ASD and TD individuals did not differ in their hemodynamic response to gustatory stimuli. However, the ASD subjects, but not the controls, exhibited a positive association between self-reported taste reactivity and the response to sweet tastants within the insular cortex and multiple brain regions associated with gustatory perception and reward. There was a strong interaction between diagnostic group and taste reactivity on tastant response in brain regions associated with ASD pathophysiology, including the bilateral anterior superior temporal sulcus (STS). This interaction of diagnosis and taste reactivity was also observed in the resting state functional connectivity between the anterior STS and dorsal mid-insula (i.e., gustatory cortex).
These results suggest that self-reported heightened taste reactivity in ASD is associated with heightened brain responses to food-related stimuli and atypical functional connectivity of primary gustatory cortex, which may predispose these individuals to maladaptive and unhealthy patterns of selective eating behavior.
Trial registration
(clinicaltrials.gov identifier) NCT01031407. Registered: December 14, 2009.
