ORCID iD
O'Reilly: 0000-0002-3149-4934
Huberty: 0000-0003-2637-031X
van Noordt: 0000-0001-8413-1320
Webb: 0000-0003-4101-6255
Elsabbagh: 0000-0002-7311-9059
Document Type
Article
Subject Area(s)
Autism, eeg, functional connectivity
Abstract
Background
Many studies have reported that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with atypical structural and functional connectivity. However, we know relatively little about the development of these differences in infancy.
Methods
We used a high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) dataset pooled from two independent infant sibling cohorts, to characterize such neurodevelopmental deviations during the first years of life. EEG was recorded at 6 and 12 months of age in infants at typical (N = 92) or elevated likelihood for ASD (N = 90), determined by the presence of an older sibling with ASD. We computed the functional connectivity between cortical sources of EEG during video watching using the corrected imaginary part of phase-locking values.
Results
Our main analysis found no significant association between functional connectivity and ASD, showing only significant effects for age, sex, age-sex interaction, and site. Given these null results, we performed an exploratory analysis and observed, at 12 months, a negative correlation between functional connectivity and ADOS calibrated severity scores for restrictive and repetitive behaviors (RRB).
Limitations
The small sample of ASD participants inherent to sibling studies limits diagnostic group comparisons. Also, results from our secondary exploratory analysis should be considered only as potential relationships to further explore, given their increased vulnerability to false positives.
Conclusions
These results are inconclusive concerning an association between EEG functional connectivity and ASD in infancy. Exploratory analyses provided preliminary support for a relationship between RRB and functional connectivity specifically, but these preliminary observations need corroboration on larger samples.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Publication Info
Published in Molecular Autism, Volume 14, 2023.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article.
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APA Citation
O’Reilly, C., Huberty, S., van Noordt, S., Desjardins, J., Wright, N., Scorah, J., Webb, S. J., Elsabbagh, M., Baron-Cohen, S., Bolton, P., Chandler, S., Charman, T., Fernandes, J., Garwood, H., Hudryx, K., Johnson, M. H., Tucker, L., Volein, A., & BASIS team. (2023). EEG functional connectivity in infants at elevated familial likelihood for autism spectrum disorder. Molecular Autism, 14(1), 37. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-023-00570-5
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