Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, Montreal, QC, H3A 2B4, Canada; Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Neuropsychology Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, New Territories, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Biol Psychol. 2019 Nov;148:107743. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107743. Epub 2019 Aug 22.
Adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit altered frontal lobe activation during working memory (WM) processing despite relatively intact WM updating ability. To determine whether this alteration reflects compensation and is also present in adolescents, this study examined prefrontal activation during WM updating in adolescents with ASD using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Eighteen adolescents with high-functioning ASD and 18 typically developing (TD) adolescents aged 11-18 years successfully underwent a verbal n-back paradigm with a WM (i.e., 2-back) and a control (i.e., 0-back) condition. We found that adolescents with ASD exhibit more right-lateralized prefrontal activation in response to WM load (i.e., 2-back > 0-back) compared to TD adolescents. More importantly, right-lateralized prefrontal activation was associated with better WM updating ability-specifically among adolescents with ASD. Thus, adolescents with ASD might rely on a compensatory mechanism such as the employment of a visuospatial processing style to help them update verbal WM.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）成人在工作记忆（WM）处理过程中表现出额叶激活改变，尽管 WM 更新能力相对完整。为了确定这种改变是否反映了代偿，并且也存在于青少年中，本研究使用近红外光谱技术检查了 ASD 青少年 WM 更新过程中的前额叶激活。18 名高功能 ASD 青少年和 18 名典型发育（TD）青少年（年龄 11-18 岁）成功完成了言语 n-back 范式，其中包括 WM（即 2-back）和控制（即 0-back）条件。我们发现，与 TD 青少年相比，ASD 青少年在 WM 负荷（即 2-back > 0-back）时表现出更明显的右侧前额叶激活。更重要的是，右侧前额叶激活与更好的 WM 更新能力相关，特别是在 ASD 青少年中。因此，ASD 青少年可能依赖于补偿机制，例如采用视觉空间处理方式来帮助他们更新言语 WM。
