Department of Diagnostic Imaging, The Hospital for Sick Children, 555 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5G 1X8, Canada.
Neurosciences and Mental Health Program, SickKids Research Institute, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Mol Autism. 2020 Dec 7;11(1):95. doi: 10.1186/s13229-020-00400-y.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often report difficulties with inhibition in everyday life. During inhibition tasks, adults with ASD show reduced activation of and connectivity between brain areas implicated in inhibition, suggesting impairments in inhibitory control at the neural level. Our study further investigated these differences by using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine the frequency band(s) in which functional connectivity underlying response inhibition occurs, as brain functions are frequency specific, and whether connectivity in certain frequency bands differs between adults with and without ASD.
We analysed MEG data from 40 adults with ASD (27 males; 26.94 ± 6.08 years old) and 39 control adults (27 males; 27.29 ± 5.94 years old) who performed a Go/No-go task. The task involved two blocks with different proportions of No-go trials: Inhibition (25% No-go) and Vigilance (75% No-go). We compared whole-brain connectivity in the two groups during correct No-go trials in the Inhibition vs. Vigilance blocks between 0 and 400 ms.
Despite comparable performance on the Go/No-go task, adults with ASD showed reduced connectivity compared to controls in the alpha band (8-14 Hz) in a network with a main hub in the right inferior frontal gyrus. Decreased connectivity in this network predicted more self-reported difficulties on a measure of inhibition in everyday life.
Measures of everyday inhibitory control were not available for all participants, so this relationship between reduced network connectivity and inhibitory control abilities may not be necessarily representative of all adults with ASD or the larger ASD population. Further research with independent samples of adults with ASD, including those with a wider range of cognitive abilities, would be valuable.
Our findings demonstrate reduced functional brain connectivity during response inhibition in adults with ASD. As alpha-band synchrony has been linked to top-down control mechanisms, we propose that the lack of alpha synchrony observed in our ASD group may reflect difficulties in suppressing task-irrelevant information, interfering with inhibition in real-life situations.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）患者在日常生活中常常报告存在抑制困难。在抑制任务中，ASD 患者表现出与抑制相关的大脑区域的活动减少和连通性降低，这表明在神经水平上存在抑制控制的损伤。我们的研究进一步使用脑磁图（MEG）来检查反应抑制的功能连接所发生的频带（多个频带），因为大脑功能具有频率特异性，以及 ASD 患者和对照组之间是否存在特定频带的连通性差异。
我们分析了 40 名 ASD 患者（27 名男性；26.94±6.08 岁）和 39 名对照组成年人（27 名男性；27.29±5.94 岁）的 MEG 数据，他们执行了 Go/No-go 任务。该任务包含两个块，其中包含不同比例的 No-go 试验：抑制（25% No-go）和警戒（75% No-go）。我们比较了两组在抑制与警戒块中正确 No-go 试验期间 0 到 400ms 之间的全脑连通性。
尽管在 Go/No-go 任务上表现相当，但 ASD 患者的连通性比对照组低，在以右侧下额叶为主要枢纽的网络中，在 alpha 频段（8-14Hz）。该网络中的连通性降低预示着在日常生活中的抑制测量中自我报告的困难更大。
并非所有参与者都可获得日常抑制控制的测量值，因此这种网络连通性降低与抑制控制能力之间的关系可能不一定代表所有 ASD 患者或更大的 ASD 人群。对包括具有更广泛认知能力的 ASD 患者在内的独立 ASD 患者样本进行进一步研究将是有价值的。
我们的研究结果表明，在 ASD 患者中，反应抑制期间的大脑功能连通性降低。由于 alpha 频段同步与自上而下的控制机制有关，我们提出我们的 ASD 组中观察到的 alpha 同步缺失可能反映了抑制无关信息的困难，从而干扰了现实生活中的抑制。
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