Decreased striatal and amygdala connectivity affects imagination and attention in Autism.
Poster No:
1236
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Kritika Bhandari1, Ronit Karki2, Swastika Bhattarai2, Kushal Devkota2, Kamal KC2, Alaka Acharya2
Institutions:
1College of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Sciences, Kathmandu, Bagmati, 2College of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Sciences, Lalitpur, Bagmati
First Author:
Co-Author(s):
Kamal KC, Assistant Professor
College of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Sciences
Lalitpur, Bagmati
College of Biomedical Engineering and Applied Sciences
Lalitpur, Bagmati
Introduction:
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), marked by deficiencies in social communication, restricted interests, and repetitive behavioral patterns, has been considered a pediatric health issue of growing urgency (Thom, 2024). Although previous studies have shown altered connectivity patterns of cortico-subcortical connectivity, relatively inconsistent findings have affected the generalisation of these findings (Cerliani, 2015; Guo, 2016; Yang, 2024). In our study, we hypothesize that autistic traits may be associated with differently altered connectivity primarily within the amygdala and caudate nucleus, the regions primarily associated with social and emotional processing and higher-order executive functions. Using resting-state fMRI data, we explored alterations in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of these regions and investigated the relationships between connectivity and behavioral performance between autistic and typically developing individuals.
Methods:
Resting-state 3DfMRI scans and anatomical images of the brain of 25 Healthy Controls (HC) and 25 patients with ASD were acquired from the SRBPS multi-disorder MRI dataset, matched by age and gender. The functional MRIs were pre-processed using AFNI to facilitate the group analyses. ROI included the bilateral medial and lateral amygdala, and bilateral dorsal and ventral caudate, defined using Brainnetome atlas. We calculated rsFC for each seed region as the correlation between its mean time course and the time course of every voxel in the brain. We used two-sample t-test for each bilateral seed region to explore connectivity differences between ASD and HC. Finally, correlations between significant connectivity values and autism severity scores were computed.
Results:
Our results revealed reduced connectivity between seed regions and brain areas associated with social skills, imagination, and executive functions in ASD compared to HCs. Bilateral ventral and dorsal caudate showed decreased rsFC with regions such as the cerebral and cerebellar cortex, dentate nucleus, thalamus, and right fusiform gyrus while the bilateral medial and lateral amygdala displayed reduced FC with the orbitofrontal cortex, visual cortex, frontal operculum, insula, cingulate cortex, precuneus, motor cortex, and right fusiform gyrus. Connectivity differences between the left dorsal caudate and right lateral amygdala with the left cerebellar cortex correlated with imagination difficulties (r = 0.43, r = 0.41; p < 0.05). Negative correlations were observed between amygdala (mid and lateral)-frontal operculum and medial amygdala-visual cortex connectivity with social skills scores (r = -0.42, r = -0.43, r = -0.23; p < 0.05), as well as between right dorsal caudate-thalamus and left lateral amygdala-right frontal operculum connectivity with FIQ scores (r = -0.44, r = -0.45; p < 0.05). In contrast, lateral amygdala-left cerebral cortex connectivity correlated positively with attention scores, suggesting higher attentive behaviors in ASD.
Conclusions:
Our findings revealed that the ASD group showed altered functional connectivity of the amygdala and caudate with the rest of the brain compared to the HCs. Specifically, patients with ASD primarily displayed alterations between seed regions and left frontal operculum, cerebral cortex, thalamus, left hippocampus, precuneus, visual cortex, auditory cortex, and motor cortex. Furthermore, significant correlations between behavioural scores and connectivity patterns of the amygdala and caudate with brain regions associated with neural pathways involved in social, cognitive, and sensory processing highlight the involvement of altered cortico-subcortical connectivity within these regions offering objective insights into the neural underpinnings of the disorder that might contribute to the pathogenesis of ASD and can be used as biomarkers for its diagnosis.
Disorders of the Nervous System:
Neurodevelopmental/ Early Life (eg. ADHD, autism) 2
Lifespan Development:
Early life, Adolescence, Aging
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
Connectivity (eg. functional, effective, structural) 1
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling
Novel Imaging Acquisition Methods:
BOLD fMRI
Keywords:
Autism
FUNCTIONAL MRI
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
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Healthy subjects only or patients (note that patient studies may also involve healthy subjects):
Was this research conducted in the United States?
Were any human subjects research approved by the relevant Institutional Review Board or ethics panel? NOTE: Any human subjects studies without IRB approval will be automatically rejected.
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2. Guo, X., Duan, X., Long, Z., Chen, H., Wang, Y., Zheng, J., ... & Chen, H. (2016). Decreased amygdala functional connectivity in adolescents with autism: A resting-state fMRI study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 257, 47-56.
3. Thom, R. P., Friedman, N. D., Nasir, R., Politte, L. C., Nowinski, L. A., & McDougle, C. J. (2024). Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Autism Spectrum Disorder. Tasman’s Psychiatry (1-54)
4. Yang, C., Wang, X. K., Ma, S. Z., Lee, N. Y., Zhang, Q. R., Dong, W. Q., ... & Yuan, L. X. (2024). Abnormal functional connectivity of the reward network is associated with social communication impairments in autism spectrum disorder: A large-scale multi-site resting-state fMRI study. Journal of Affective Disorders, 347, 608-618., vol. 347, pp. 608–618.