Purpose

This study explores subcortices and their intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) adults and investigates their relationship with clinical severity.

Methods

Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data were acquired from 74 ASD patients, and 63 gender and age-matched typically developing (TD) adults. Independent component analysis (ICA) was conducted to evaluate subcortical patterns of basal ganglia (BG) and thalamus. These two brain areas were treated as regions of interest to further calculate whole-brain FC. In addition, we employed multivariate machine learning to identify subcortices-based FC brain patterns and clinical scores to classify ASD adults from those TD subjects.

Results

In ASD individuals, autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) was negatively correlated with the BG network. Similarly, social responsiveness scale (SRS) was negatively correlated with the thalamus network. The BG-based iFC analysis revealed adults with ASD versus TD had lower FC, and its FC with the right medial temporal lobe (MTL), was positively correlated with SRS and ADOS separately. ASD could be predicted with a balanced accuracy of around 60.0 % using brain patterns and 84.7 % using clinical variables.

Conclusion

Our results revealed the abnormal subcortical iFC may be related to autism symptoms.

中文翻译：

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患有自闭症谱系障碍的高功能成人皮质下异常内在功能连接与自闭症症状之间的关系

目的

本研究探讨了自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 成人的皮质下及其内在功能连接 (iFC)，并调查了它们与临床严重程度的关系。

方法

静息态功能磁共振成像 (rs-fMRI) 数据采集自 74 名 ASD 患者和 63 名性别和年龄匹配的典型发育 (TD) 成年人。进行独立成分分析（ICA）来评估基底神经节（BG）和丘脑的皮质下模式。这两个大脑区域被视为感兴趣区域，以进一步计算全脑 FC。此外，我们采用多变量机器学习来识别基于皮层下的 FC 大脑模式和临床评分，以将 ASD 成人与 TD 受试者进行分类。

结果

在 ASD 个体中，自闭症诊断观察计划（ADOS）与 BG 网络呈负相关。同样，社交反应量表（SRS）与丘脑网络呈负相关。基于 BG 的 iFC 分析显示，与 TD 相比，患有 ASD 的成人的 FC 较低，并且其右内侧颞叶 (MTL) 的 FC 分别与 SRS 和 ADOS 呈正相关。使用大脑模式预测 ASD 的平衡准确度约为 60.0%，使用临床变量预测的平衡准确度为 84.7%。

结论

我们的结果显示异常皮质下 iFC 可能与自闭症症状有关。