Altered dynamic functional stability of resting-state brain activity in autism spectrum disorder: A multicenter fMRI study.

BACKGROUND

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a highly heterogeneous neurodevelopmental condition, and its underlying neural mechanisms remain poorly understood.

METHODS

In this study, we investigated neural patterns and mechanisms of ASD using a voxel-wise measure of dynamic functional stability-Kendall's concordance coefficient-derived from whole-brain dynamic functional connectivity in a large, multicenter fMRI dataset. Furthermore, we explored the relationship between brain activity and behavioral measures. Finally, we performed a whole-brain functional connectivity (FC) analysis using the above three significant clusters as seed points.

RESULTS

ASD showed altered dynamic functional stability in three regions, with increased stability in the left frontal pole and reduced stability in the right central opercular cortex and left postcentral gyrus. Left frontal pole stability was positively associated with ADOS communication scores, whereas left postcentral gyrus stability was negatively associated with stereotyped behaviors. Seed-based FC analyses revealed decreased FC between the left postcentral gyrus and widespread sensorimotor-parietal regions in ASD. Symptom-connectivity analyses further showed broad negative correlations between FC and ADOS scores: reduced frontal and sensorimotor connectivity was linked to more severe communication and social impairments.

CONCLUSION

Our study revealed abnormal temporal stability of functional brain activity in ASD, thereby enhancing our understanding of ASD pathogenesis. Moreover, this dynamic stability analysis may serve as a reliable tool for early autism diagnosis.