Department of Special Education and Counselling, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.
Department of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China.
Sci Rep. 2019 Mar 7;9(1):3892. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-40427-7.
The gold standard for clinical assessment of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) relies on assessing behavior via semi-structured play-based interviews and parent interviews. Although these methods show good sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing ASD cases, behavioral assessments alone may hinder the identification of asymptomatic at-risk group. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) could be an appropriate approach to produce objective neural markers to supplement behavioral assessments due to its non-invasive and task-free nature. Previous neuroimaging studies reported inconsistent resting-state abnormalities in ASD, which may be explained by small sample sizes and phenotypic heterogeneity in ASD subjects, and/or the use of different analytical methods across studies. The current study aims to investigate the local resting-state abnormalities of ASD regardless of subject age, IQ, gender, disease severity and methodological differences, using activation likelihood estimation (ALE). MEDLINE/PubMed databases were searched for whole-brain rs-fMRI studies on ASD published until Feb 2018. Eight experiments involving 424 subjects were included in the ALE meta-analysis. We demonstrate two ASD-related resting-state findings: local underconnectivity in the dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and in the right medial paracentral lobule. This study contributes to uncovering a consistent pattern of resting-state local abnormalities that may serve as potential neurobiological markers for ASD.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）临床评估的金标准依赖于通过半结构化基于游戏的访谈和家长访谈来评估行为。尽管这些方法在诊断 ASD 病例方面具有良好的敏感性和特异性，但仅进行行为评估可能会阻碍无症状高危人群的识别。静息态功能磁共振成像（rs-fMRI）由于其非侵入性和无任务性质，可以作为产生客观神经标志物的合适方法来补充行为评估。先前的神经影像学研究报告了 ASD 中的静息态异常不一致，这可能是由于 ASD 受试者的样本量小、表型异质性以及/或研究之间使用不同的分析方法所致。本研究旨在使用激活似然估计（ALE）研究无论 ASD 受试者的年龄、智商、性别、疾病严重程度和方法学差异如何，局部静息状态异常。对截至 2018 年 2 月发表的 ASD 全脑 rs-fMRI 研究进行了 MEDLINE/PubMed 数据库检索。纳入了 8 项涉及 424 名受试者的实验进行 ALE 荟萃分析。我们证明了两个与 ASD 相关的静息状态发现：背侧后扣带回皮层（PCC）和右侧内侧旁中央小叶的局部连接不足。这项研究有助于揭示静息状态局部异常的一致模式，这些异常可能作为 ASD 的潜在神经生物学标志物。
