Just Marcel Adam, Cherkassky Vladimir L, Keller Timothy A, Minshew Nancy J
Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Department of Psychology, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
Brain. 2004 Aug;127(Pt 8):1811-21. doi: 10.1093/brain/awh199. Epub 2004 Jun 23.
The brain activation of a group of high-functioning autistic participants was measured using functional MRI during sentence comprehension and the results compared with those of a Verbal IQ-matched control group. The groups differed in the distribution of activation in two of the key language areas. The autism group produced reliably more activation than the control group in Wernicke's (left laterosuperior temporal) area and reliably less activation than the control group in Broca's (left inferior frontal gyrus) area. Furthermore, the functional connectivity, i.e. the degree of synchronization or correlation of the time series of the activation, between the various participating cortical areas was consistently lower for the autistic than the control participants. These findings suggest that the neural basis of disordered language in autism entails a lower degree of information integration and synchronization across the large-scale cortical network for language processing. The article presents a theoretical account of the findings, related to neurobiological foundations of underconnectivity in autism.
使用功能磁共振成像（fMRI）测量了一组高功能自闭症参与者在句子理解过程中的大脑激活情况，并将结果与言语智商匹配的对照组进行了比较。两组在两个关键语言区域的激活分布上存在差异。自闭症组在韦尼克区（左颞上外侧）的激活明显多于对照组，而在布洛卡区（左额下回）的激活则明显少于对照组。此外，自闭症参与者各参与皮层区域之间的功能连接性，即激活时间序列的同步或相关程度，始终低于对照组参与者。这些发现表明，自闭症中语言障碍的神经基础是语言处理的大规模皮层网络中信息整合和同步程度较低。本文提出了与自闭症中连接不足的神经生物学基础相关的研究结果的理论解释。
