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Cortical Variability in the Sensory-Evoked Response in Autism

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Abstract

Previous findings have shown that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) evince greater intra-individual variability (IIV) in their sensory-evoked fMRI responses compared to typical control participants. We explore the robustness of this finding with a new sample of high-functioning adults with autism. Participants were presented with visual, somatosensory and auditory stimuli in the scanner whilst they completed a one-back task. While ASD and control participants were statistically indistinguishable with respect to behavioral responses, the new ASD group exhibited greater IIV relative to controls. We also show that the IIV was equivalent across hemispheres and remained stable over the duration of the experiment. This suggests that greater cortical IIV may be a replicable characteristic of sensory systems in autism.

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Acknowledgments

The research described here was supported by a Grant from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (177638) to DH and MB, and a NIH/NICHD Grant (HD055748) to NJM. The authors thank Ryan Egan for helping with participant recruitment and fMRI testing. We also thank the staff at the Center for Excellence in Autism Research at the University of Pittsburgh for recruitment and assessment of participants.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest pertaining to the data described here.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213-3890, USA

    Sarah M. Haigh & Marlene Behrmann

  2. Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 6 Washington Place, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    David J. Heeger

  3. Psychology Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 653, 84105, Beer-Sheba, Israel

    Ilan Dinstein

  4. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Webster Hall, Suite 300, 3811 O’Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Nancy Minshew

  5. Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh, Webster Hall, Suite 300, 3811 O’Hara Street, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Nancy Minshew

  6. Department of Psychiatry, University of Pittsburgh, Suite 420 Oxford Building, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA

    Sarah M. Haigh

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  1. Sarah M. Haigh
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  2. David J. Heeger
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  3. Ilan Dinstein
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Correspondence to Sarah M. Haigh.

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Haigh, S.M., Heeger, D.J., Dinstein, I. et al. Cortical Variability in the Sensory-Evoked Response in Autism. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 1176–1190 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-014-2276-6

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