Change detection in children with autism: An auditory event-related fMRI study

Abstract

Autism involves impairments in communication and social interaction, as well as high levels of repetitive, stereotypic and ritualistic behaviours, and extreme resistance to change. This latter dimension, whilst required for a diagnosis, has received less research attention. We hypothesise that this extreme resistance to change in autism is rooted in atypical processing of unexpected stimuli. We tested this using auditory event-related fMRI to determine regional brain activity associated with passive detection of infrequently occurring frequency-deviant and complex novel sounds in a no-task condition. Participants were twelve 10 to 15-year-old children with autism, and a group of 12 age-and sex-matched healthy controls.During deviance-detection, significant activation common to both groups was located in the superior temporal and inferior frontal gyri. During 'novelty-detection', both groups showed activity in the superior temporal gyrus, the temporo-parietal junction, the superior and inferior frontal gyri and the cingulate gyrus.Children with autism showed reduced activation of the left anterior cingulate cortex during both deviance and novelty detection. During 'novelty-detection' children with autism also showed reduced activation in the bilateral temporo-parietal region, and in the right inferior and middle frontal areas. This study confirms previous evidence from ERP studies of atypical brain function related to automatic change detection in autism. Abnormalities involved a cortical network known to have a role in attention-switching and attentional resource distribution. These results throw light on the neurophysiological processes underlying autistic 'resistance to change'. Change detection in children with autism: an auditory event-related fMRI study Marie Gomot et al: NIMG-05-251Dear Drs Toga and Fletcher, Thank you for inviting us to resubmit this manuscript to NeuroImage. We are grateful to the reviewers for their constructive comments. Especially we would like to thanks reviewer 2 who did insightful criticisms. We did take into account most of the remarks and we feel that the paper is improved as a result. Reviewer 2's observations allowed getting a better definition of the terms and concepts used. We corrected the text according to these criticisms, but we think that some of the modifications required regarding fundamental concepts on deviance processing would not serve the manuscript. We didn't wish for adding to many additional details about these fundamental concepts, in order to keep focus on the main aim of the study which was to study change processing in an autistic population. Moreover, we felt a bit disconcerted by some of the comments (See comments 5, 7, 19, 21, 24, 30 and 34 for example). We look forward to hearing from you about the acceptability of the revised manuscript for publication in NeuroImage. SUMMARY:Autism involves impairments in communication and social interaction, as well as high levels of repetitive, stereotypic and ritualistic behaviours, and extreme resistan...

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