The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation; School of Life Science and Technology, Center for Information in BioMedicine, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, People's Republic of China.
Department of Psychiatry, Behavioural and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, University of Cambridge; Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Hum Brain Mapp. 2019 Mar;40(4):1264-1275. doi: 10.1002/hbm.24447. Epub 2018 Oct 27.
Time-invariant resting-state functional connectivity studies have illuminated the crucial role of the right anterior insula (rAI) in prominent social impairments of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, a recent dynamic connectivity study demonstrated that rather than being stationary, functional connectivity patterns of the rAI vary significantly across time. The present study aimed to explore the differences in functional connectivity in dynamic states of the rAI between individuals with ASD and typically developing controls (TD). Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from a publicly available database were analyzed in 209 individuals with ASD and 298 demographically matched controls. A k-means clustering algorithm was utilized to obtain five dynamic states of functional connectivity of the rAI. The temporal properties, frequency properties, and meta-analytic decoding were first identified in TD group to obtain the characteristics of each rAI dynamic state. Multivariate analysis of variance was then performed to compare the functional connectivity patterns of the rAI between ASD and TD groups in obtained states. Significantly impaired connectivity was observed in ASD in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex, which are two critical hubs of the default mode network (DMN). States in which ASD showed decreased connectivity between the rAI and these regions were those more relevant to socio-cognitive processing. From a dynamic perspective, these findings demonstrate partially impaired resting-state functional connectivity patterns between the rAI and DMN across states in ASD, and provide novel insights into the neural mechanisms underlying social impairments in individuals with ASD.
静息态功能连接研究不变性揭示了右侧前岛叶（rAI）在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的突出社交障碍中的关键作用。然而，最近的动态连接研究表明，rAI 的功能连接模式并不是固定不变的，而是随时间显著变化。本研究旨在探索 ASD 个体和典型发育对照（TD）之间 rAI 的动态状态的功能连接差异。从一个公开可用的数据库中获得的静息态功能磁共振成像数据在 209 名 ASD 个体和 298 名人口统计学匹配的对照中进行了分析。使用 k-均值聚类算法获得 rAI 的五个动态功能连接状态。首先在 TD 组中确定了时间特性、频率特性和元分析解码，以获得每个 rAI 动态状态的特征。然后进行多变量方差分析，以比较获得状态下 ASD 和 TD 组之间 rAI 的功能连接模式。在 ASD 中，腹内侧前额叶皮层和后扣带回皮层的连接明显受损，这两个区域是默认模式网络（DMN）的两个关键枢纽。在 ASD 中，rAI 与这些区域之间的连接减少的状态与社会认知处理更为相关。从动态角度来看，这些发现表明 ASD 个体在不同状态之间 rAI 与 DMN 之间的静息态功能连接模式部分受损，并为 ASD 个体的社交障碍的神经机制提供了新的见解。
