The autism brain imaging data exchange: towards a large-scale evaluation of the intrinsic brain architecture in autism

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) represent a formidable challenge for psychiatry and neuroscience because of their high prevalence, life-long nature, complexity and substantial heterogeneity. Facing these obstacles requires large-scale multidisciplinary efforts. While the field of genetics has pioneered data sharing for these reasons, neuroimaging had not kept pace. In response, we introduce the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE) – a grassroots consortium aggregating and openly sharing 1112 existing resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI) datasets with corresponding structural MRI and phenotypic information from 539 individuals with ASD and 573 age-matched typical controls (TC; 7–64 years) (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide/). Here, we present this resource and demonstrate its suitability for advancing knowledge of ASD neurobiology based on analyses of 360 males with ASD and 403 male age-matched TC. We focused on whole-brain intrinsic functional connectivity and also survey a range of voxel-wise measures of intrinsic functional brain architecture. Whole-brain analyses reconciled seemingly disparate themes of both hypo and hyperconnectivity in the ASD literature; both were detected, though hypoconnectivity dominated, particularly for cortico-cortical and interhemispheric functional connectivity. Exploratory analyses using an array of regional metrics of intrinsic brain function converged on common loci of dysfunction in ASD (mid and posterior insula, posterior cingulate cortex), and highlighted less commonly explored regions such as thalamus. The survey of the ABIDE R-fMRI datasets provides unprecedented demonstrations of both replication and novel discovery. By pooling multiple international datasets, ABIDE is expected to accelerate the pace of discovery setting the stage for the next generation of ASD studies.

Differences in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus but no general disruption of white matter tracts in children with autism spectrum disorder

“…One very recent paper pooled functional connectivity scans from 17 different sites and 539 people with ASD across a wide age and IQ range and used data scrubbing techniques to try to mitigate residual artifacts from head motion. Although this study found statistically significant differences in functional connectivity between those with ASD and TD children (29), important questions for the future are (i) whether comparable differences in diffusion measures of connectivity would be found in similarly large samples, and (ii) whether effect sizes so small they can only be detected with extremely large samples are theoretically significant (30). In any event, the problem with head motion in functional correlation studies that use more standard sample sizes underlines the importance of matching for head motion in diffusion studies.…”

Functional connectivity-based subtypes of individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder

“…The data had been obtained from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (ABIDE; Di Martino et al, 2014; http://www.fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide) and preprocessed using the Connectome Computation System pipeline . Participants were excluded if their full scale IQ was less than or equal to 75 or if their mean framewise displacement (FD) during the rs-fMRI scan was greater than 0.20mm.…”

Brain dynamics in ASD during movie‐watching show idiosyncratic functional integration and segregation

“…Accordingly, coordinated processing between separate brain regions, known as functional connectivity (FC), that is, typically quantified by correlational measures of statistical interdependency (Friston, 1994), has been assessed in resting‐state (Di Martino et al, 2014; Gotts et al, 2012; Supekar et al, 2013) and in a variety of tasks probing speech comprehension (Just, Cherkassky, Keller, & Minshew, 2004), visuomotor performance (Mizuno, Villalobos, Davies, Dahl, & Müller, 2006; Turner, Frost, Linsenbardt, McIlroy, & Müller, 2006; Villalobos, Mizuno, Dahl, Kemmotsu, & Müller, 2005), visuospatial abilities (Damarla et al, 2010; Liu, Cherkassky, Minshew, & Just, 2011), face processing (Kleinhans et al, 2008; Rudie et al, 2012), or executive functions (Just, Cherkassky, Keller, Kana, & Minshew, 2007; Kana, Keller, Minshew, & Just, 2007; Koshino et al, 2008). The big picture emerging from those reports is lowered FC between frontal and posterior brain regions (see Vissers, Cohen, & Geurts, 2012 for a review), as formulated in the underconnectivity theory of autism (Just, Keller, Malave, Kana, & Varma, 2012).…”