Altered dynamic functional stability of resting-state brain activity in autism spectrum disorder: A multicenter fMRI study.

This brain scan study looked at how stable brain activity patterns are in people with autism. They found that three brain areas showed different stability patterns compared to typical brains. Areas involved in movement and touch were less stable, while a frontal brain area was more stable. These changes were linked to autism symptoms like communication difficulties and repetitive behaviors.

This multicenter fMRI study examined dynamic functional stability in autism spectrum disorder using a novel brain connectivity analysis method. Researchers found altered temporal stability in three brain regions: increased stability in the left frontal pole and decreased stability in the right central opercular cortex and left postcentral gyrus. The left frontal pole stability correlated with communication difficulties, while left postcentral gyrus stability was associated with repetitive behaviors. Connectivity analysis revealed reduced connections between sensorimotor regions and widespread brain areas.

These findings suggest that abnormal temporal patterns of brain activity may contribute to autism symptoms and could potentially serve as diagnostic markers.

Dynamic stability analysis may offer new diagnostic approaches for autism. The relationship between brain stability patterns and specific symptoms could inform targeted interventions. However, clinical translation requires validation in larger samples with diverse autism presentations and comparison with other assessment methods.

Sample size not reported, limiting assessment of study power. Unknown study design prevents evaluation of methodology quality. Unclear if findings are specific to autism or present in other neurodevelopmental conditions. Temporal stability measures are relatively novel and require validation.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition, and its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated neural patterns and mechanisms of ASD using a voxel-wise measure of dynamic functional stability-Kendall's concordance coefficient-derived from whole-brain dynamic functional connectivity in a large, multicenter fMRI dataset. Furthermore, we explored the relationship between brain activity and behavioral measures. Finally, we performed a whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis using the above three significant clusters as seed points.

ASD showed altered dynamic functional stability in three regions, with increased stability in the left frontal pole and reduced stability in the right central opercular cortex and left postcentral gyrus. Left frontal pole stability was positively associated with ADOS communication scores, whereas left postcentral gyrus stability was negatively associated with stereotyped behaviors. Seed-based FC analyses revealed decreased FC between the left postcentral gyrus and widespread sensorimotor-parietal regions in ASD. Symptom-connectivity analyses further showed broad negative correlations between FC and ADOS scores: reduced frontal and sensorimotor connectivity was linked to more severe communication and social impairments.

Our study revealed abnormal temporal stability of functional brain activity in ASD, thereby enhancing our understanding of ASD pathogenesis. Moreover, this dynamic stability analysis may serve as a reliable tool for early autism diagnosis.