Biomedical Signal Processing / Medical Signal Processing / Biosignal Processing
Alireza Talesh Jafadideh; Babak Mohammadzadeh Asl
Volume 14, Issue 2 , July 2020, , Pages 143-157
Abstract
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Comparison study between ASD and typically control (TC) subjects through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides valuable understanding ...
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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly prevalent neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors. Comparison study between ASD and typically control (TC) subjects through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides valuable understanding for differences in brain function. Recently, through dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) analysis, it is found that brain functional connectivity possesses dynamic nature and shows transient connectivity patterns (“states”) repeating over time. In this comparison study between ASD and TC, we employed the rest functional MRI (rfMRI) data of San Diego State University (SDSU) of ABIDE II database to examine the brain intra and inter network connectivity and also to investigate the relations of age and social responsiveness scale (SRS) score (score measuring autistic traits) to brain inter regions connectivity strength. These aims were implemented in all DFC states. The ASD subjects experienced more the state with less intra and inter network connections. Further, the DMN segregation reduction from other functional networks emerged as a common them. Furthermore, in ASD, the connection strength between auditory and visual networks was decreased by increasing the age. In ASD, the SRS had more positive relation to connectivity strength existing between cerebellar, auditory, visual networks and cognitive control network in comparison to TC. All these results demonstrate that some differences exist in brain network connection of ASD in comparison to the TC subjects and these differences can be more distinctively revealed by employing DFC analysis.
