BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Cortical responses before six months of life associate with later autism

    Lloyd-Fox, Sarah and Blasi, Anna and Pasco, G. and Gliga, Teodora and Jones, Emily J.H. and Murphy, D. and Elwell, C.E. and Charman, T. and Johnson, Mark H. (2017) Cortical responses before six months of life associate with later autism. European Journal of Neuroscience 47 (6), pp. 736-749. ISSN 0953-816X.

    [img] Text
    LloydFoxNIRSASD_2017.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript
    Restricted to Repository staff only

    Download (4MB)
    [img]
    Preview
    Text
    20661A.pdf - Published Version of Record
    Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

    Download (1MB) | Preview

    Abstract

    Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a common, highly heritable, developmental disorder, and later-born siblings of diagnosed children are at higher risk for developing ASD than the general population. Although the emergence of behavioural symptoms of ASD in toddlerhood is well characterised, far less is known about development during the first months of life of infants at familial risk. In a prospective longitudinal study of infants at familial risk followed to 36 months, we measured functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) brain responses to social videos of people (i.e. peek-a-boo) compared to non-social images (vehicles) and human vocalisations compared to non-vocal sounds. At 4 to 6 months, infants who went on to develop ASD at 3 years (N = 5) evidenced reduced activation to visual social stimuli relative to low risk infants (N = 16) across inferior frontal (IFG) and posterior temporal (pSTS-TPJ) regions of the cortex. Furthermore, these infants also showed reduced activation to vocal sounds and enhanced activation to non-vocal sounds within left lateralised temporal (MTG-STG) regions compared with low risk infants and high risk infants who did not develop ASD (N = 15). The degree of activation to both the visual and auditory stimuli correlated with parent reported ASD symptomology in toddlerhood. These preliminary findings are consistent with later atypical social brain responses seen in children and adults with ASD, and highlight the need for further work interrogating atypical processing in early infancy and how it may relate to later social interaction and communication difficulties characteristic of ASD.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
    Depositing User: Sarah Lloyd-Fox
    Date Deposited: 18 Dec 2017 14:09
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:38
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/20661

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    291Downloads
    6 month trend
    254Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item
    Edit/View Item