Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Department of Anesthesiology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
Autism Res. 2023 Nov;16(11):2077-2089. doi: 10.1002/aur.3017. Epub 2023 Aug 28.
Electroencephalographic peak alpha frequency (PAF) is a marker of neural maturation that increases with age throughout childhood. Distinct maturation of PAF is observed in children with autism spectrum disorder such that PAF does not increase with age and is instead positively associated with cognitive ability. The current study clarifies and extends previous findings by characterizing the effects of age and cognitive ability on PAF between diagnostic groups in a sample of children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder. Resting EEG data and behavioral measures were collected from 45 autistic children and 34 neurotypical controls aged 8 to 18 years. Utilizing generalized additive models to account for nonlinear relations, we examined differences in the joint effect of age and nonverbal IQ by diagnosis as well as bivariate relations between age, nonverbal IQ, and PAF across diagnostic groups. Age was positively associated with PAF among neurotypical children but not among autistic children. In contrast, nonverbal IQ but not age was positively associated with PAF among autistic children. Models accounting for nonlinear relations revealed different developmental trajectories as a function of age and cognitive ability based on diagnostic status. Results align with prior evidence indicating that typical age-related increases in PAF are absent in autistic children and that PAF instead increases with cognitive ability in these children. Findings suggest the potential of PAF to index distinct trajectories of neural maturation in autistic children.
脑电图的阿尔法波峰值频率（PAF）是一种神经成熟的标志物，它会随着儿童时期的年龄增长而增加。自闭症谱系障碍儿童的 PAF 会有明显的成熟差异，即 PAF 不会随年龄增长而增加，而是与认知能力呈正相关。本研究通过对自闭症谱系障碍儿童和非自闭症谱系障碍儿童的样本进行分析，明确并扩展了之前的研究结果，即年龄和认知能力对 PAF 的影响在不同诊断组之间的特征。研究收集了 45 名自闭症儿童和 34 名神经典型对照组 8 至 18 岁儿童的静息脑电图数据和行为测量数据。利用广义加性模型来解释非线性关系，我们根据诊断结果，检查了年龄和非言语智商联合效应的差异，以及在不同诊断组中，年龄、非言语智商和 PAF 之间的双变量关系。在神经典型儿童中，年龄与 PAF 呈正相关，而在自闭症儿童中则不然。相反，在自闭症儿童中，非言语智商与 PAF 呈正相关，而年龄则不然。考虑到非线性关系的模型揭示了不同的发展轨迹，这取决于诊断状态和认知能力。研究结果与之前的证据一致，表明自闭症儿童中典型的与年龄相关的 PAF 增加是不存在的，而在这些儿童中，PAF 则随认知能力的提高而增加。这些发现表明 PAF 可能是自闭症儿童神经成熟的独特轨迹的指标。
