Mohammad-Rezazadeh Iman, Frohlich Joel, Loo Sandra K, Jeste Shafali S
UCLA Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, California, USA *Iman Mohammad-Rezazadeh and Joel Frohlich contributed equally to the writing of this article.
Curr Opin Neurol. 2016 Apr;29(2):137-47. doi: 10.1097/WCO.0000000000000301.
Many studies have reported that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have different brain connectivity patterns compared with typically developing individuals. However, the results of more recent studies do not unanimously support the traditional view in which individuals with ASD have lower connectivity between distant brain regions and increased connectivity within local brain regions. In this review, we discuss different methods for measuring brain connectivity and how the use of different metrics may contribute to the lack of convergence of investigations of connectivity in ASD.
The discrepancy in brain connectivity results across studies may be due to important methodological factors, such as the connectivity measure applied, the age of patients studied, the brain region(s) examined, and the time interval and frequency band(s) in which connectivity was analyzed.
We conclude that more sophisticated electroencephalography analytic approaches should be utilized to more accurately infer causation and directionality of information transfer between brain regions, which may show dynamic changes of functional connectivity in the brain. Moreover, further investigations of connectivity with respect to behavior and clinical phenotype are needed to probe underlying brain networks implicated in core deficits of ASD.
许多研究报告称，与发育正常的个体相比，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者具有不同的脑连接模式。然而，最近的研究结果并不一致支持传统观点，即ASD患者在远距离脑区之间的连接性较低，而在局部脑区内的连接性增加。在本综述中，我们讨论了测量脑连接性的不同方法，以及不同指标的使用如何可能导致ASD连接性研究缺乏一致性。
各项研究中脑连接性结果的差异可能归因于重要的方法学因素，例如所应用的连接性测量方法、所研究患者的年龄、所检查的脑区，以及分析连接性时的时间间隔和频段。
我们得出结论，应采用更复杂的脑电图分析方法，以更准确地推断脑区之间信息传递的因果关系和方向性，这可能显示出大脑中功能连接性的动态变化。此外，需要进一步研究连接性与行为和临床表型的关系，以探究与ASD核心缺陷相关的潜在脑网络。
