Department of Psychiatry, University of Colorado Denver, Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045 USA.
Psychiatry Res. 2013 Aug 30;213(2):115-21. doi: 10.1016/j.pscychresns.2013.02.005. Epub 2013 Jun 13.
People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have atypical visual perception of global and local information. Previous neuroimaging studies have examined the functional anatomy of locally directed attention during visual processing in ASD, but few have examined differences in both globally and locally directed attention. We performed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 17 adults with ASD and 16 typically developing (TD) subjects to examine the neurobiology of both global- and local-level information processing in ASD using an abstract hierarchical design task. TD subjects showed no regions of increased brain activation relative to subjects with ASD as assessed using whole brain analysis. Subjects with ASD exhibited greater activation in right superior frontal gyrus during locally directed attention. During globally directed attention, the ASD group showed greater right lateral occipital activation. Additionally, subjects with ASD showed less deactivation in medial prefrontal cortex (part of the default mode network) in the globally directed attention condition. Our findings help elucidate networks of brain activation related to atyipcal global and local feature processing in ASD.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者对全局和局部信息的视觉感知存在异常。先前的神经影像学研究已经检查了 ASD 患者在视觉处理过程中局部定向注意的功能解剖结构，但很少有研究检查全局和局部定向注意的差异。我们对 17 名 ASD 成人和 16 名典型发育（TD）受试者进行了功能磁共振成像（fMRI），使用抽象层次设计任务检查 ASD 中全局和局部信息处理的神经生物学。使用全脑分析评估，与 ASD 受试者相比，TD 受试者没有显示出大脑激活增加的区域。在局部定向注意时，ASD 受试者的右侧额上回表现出更大的激活。在全局定向注意时，ASD 组的右侧外侧枕叶激活增加。此外，在全局定向注意条件下，ASD 受试者的内侧前额叶皮层（默认模式网络的一部分）去激活减少。我们的发现有助于阐明与 ASD 中异常全局和局部特征处理相关的大脑激活网络。
