Ou Wenfei, Zeng Wenxiu, Gao Wenjian, He Juan, Meng Yufei, Fang Xiaowen, Nie Jingxin
Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, School of Psychology, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, China.
Front Comput Neurosci. 2022 May 3;16:877204. doi: 10.3389/fncom.2022.877204. eCollection 2022.
Recently, movie-watching fMRI has been recognized as a novel method to explore brain working patterns. Previous researchers correlated natural stimuli with brain responses to explore brain functional specialization by "reverse correlation" methods, which were based on within-group analysis. However, what external stimuli drove significantly different brain responses in two groups of different subjects were still unknown. To address this, sliding time windows technique combined with inter-Subject functional correlation (ISFC) was proposed to detect movie events with significant group differences between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typical development (TD) subjects. Then, using inter-Subject correlation (ISC) and ISFC analysis, we found that in three movie events involving character emotions, the ASD group showed significantly lower ISC in the middle temporal gyrus, temporal pole, cerebellum, caudate, precuneus, and showed decreased functional connectivity between large scale networks than that in TD. Under the movie event focusing on objects and scenes shot, the dorsal and ventral attentional networks of ASD had a strong synchronous response. Meanwhile, ASD also displayed increased functional connectivity between the frontoparietal network (FPN) and dorsal attention network (DAN), FPN, and sensorimotor network (SMN) than TD. ASD has its own unique synchronous response rather than being "unresponsive" in natural movie-watching. Our findings provide a new method and valuable insight for exploring the inconsistency of the brain "tick collectively" to same natural stimuli. This analytic approach has the potential to explore pathological mechanisms and promote training methods of ASD.
最近，观看电影功能磁共振成像已被公认为是一种探索大脑工作模式的新方法。先前的研究人员通过基于组内分析的“反向相关”方法，将自然刺激与大脑反应相关联，以探索大脑功能特化。然而，两组不同受试者中，究竟是什么外部刺激导致了显著不同的大脑反应，仍然未知。为了解决这个问题，研究人员提出了滑动时间窗技术与受试者间功能相关性（ISFC）相结合的方法，以检测自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）和典型发育（TD）受试者之间存在显著组间差异的电影事件。然后，通过受试者间相关性（ISC）和ISFC分析，我们发现，在三个涉及角色情感的电影事件中，ASD组在颞中回、颞极、小脑、尾状核、楔前叶的ISC显著降低，并且与TD组相比，其大规模网络之间的功能连接性下降。在聚焦于物体和场景拍摄的电影事件下，ASD的背侧和腹侧注意网络有强烈的同步反应。同时，与TD组相比，ASD在前顶叶网络（FPN）与背侧注意网络（DAN）、FPN与感觉运动网络（SMN）之间的功能连接性也增加。在自然观看电影时，ASD有其独特的同步反应，并非“无反应”。我们的研究结果为探索大脑对相同自然刺激“集体滴答”不一致性提供了一种新方法和有价值的见解。这种分析方法有潜力探索ASD的病理机制并促进其训练方法。
