Gao Le, Zhang Tengda, Zhang Yigeng, Liu Junfeng, Guo Xiaonan
School of Information Science and Engineering, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China.
Hebei Key Laboratory of Information Transmission and Signal Processing, Yanshan University, Qinhuangdao, 066004, China.
J Autism Dev Disord. 2024 Dec 28. doi: 10.1007/s10803-024-06696-6.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been reported to exhibit altered local functional consistency. However, previous studies mainly focused on male samples and explored the temporal consistency in the ASD brain ignoring the spatial consistency. In this study, FOur-dimensional Consistency of local neural Activities (FOCA) analysis was used to investigate the sex differences of local spatiotemporal consistency of spontaneous brain activity in ASD. This study used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange database, including 64 males/64 females with ASD and 64 male/64 female neurotypical controls (NCs). Two-way analysis of variance was performed to ascertain diagnosis-by-sex interaction effects on whole brain FOCA maps. Moreover, granger causal analysis was used to investigate effective connectivity between the brain regions with interaction effects and the whole-brain in ASD. Significant diagnosis-by-sex interaction effects on FOCA were observed in the bilateral precuneus (PCUN), bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and right dorsolateral superior frontal gyrus. Specifically, FOCA was significantly increased in males with ASD but decreased in females with ASD in the PCUN compared with the sex-matched NC group. In addition, the lack of sex differences in the causal influences from the bilateral anterior cingulate cortex/medial prefrontal cortex to the PCUN was observed in ASD. Our results reveal altered sex differences in the spatiotemporal consistency of spontaneous brain activity and functional interaction of the anterior and posterior default mode network (DMN) in ASD, highlighting the critical role of the DMN in the sex heterogeneity of ASD.
据报道，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）存在局部功能一致性改变的情况。然而，以往的研究主要集中在男性样本上，探讨了ASD大脑中的时间一致性，而忽略了空间一致性。在本研究中，采用局部神经活动的四维一致性（FOCA）分析来研究ASD患者自发脑活动的局部时空一致性的性别差异。本研究使用了来自自闭症脑成像数据交换数据库的静息态功能磁共振成像数据，包括64名患有ASD的男性/64名患有ASD的女性以及64名男性/64名女性神经典型对照（NCs）。进行了双向方差分析，以确定性别与诊断之间对全脑FOCA图谱的交互作用。此外，采用格兰杰因果分析来研究ASD中具有交互作用的脑区与全脑之间的有效连接性。在双侧楔前叶（PCUN）、双侧内侧前额叶皮质和右侧背外侧额上回观察到了性别与诊断之间对FOCA的显著交互作用。具体而言，与性别匹配的NC组相比，ASD男性患者的PCUN中FOCA显著增加，而ASD女性患者的PCUN中FOCA则降低。此外，在ASD中观察到双侧前扣带回皮质/内侧前额叶皮质对PCUN的因果影响不存在性别差异。我们的研究结果揭示了ASD患者自发脑活动的时空一致性以及前后默认模式网络（DMN）功能交互作用中性别差异的改变，突出了DMN在ASD性别异质性中的关键作用。
