Connectivity abnormalities in autism spectrum disorder patients: A resting state fMRI study

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are presented as social deficits that cause different behavior abnormalities. One of the most important characteristic of ASDs is repetitive behavior. Recent studies of functional connectivity show that these deficits may alter connections in the brain. Most of them show alternations in default mode network (DMN) only using a model based or model free method. In this study, we investigate roles of three resting state networks (default mode network (DMN), visual, and insular-temporal/ACC) in functional connectivity alternations of 24 ASDs. The study is done using independent component analysis (ICA) which is a data-driven method and can identify temporally relevant components. By obtaining correlations among time courses of these networks, functional connectivity among them is investigated as well. Therefore, this paper benefits from both methods of analysing fMRI data. Our experimental results show that in ASDs, within-network connections in DMN and visual network is decreased compared to the healthy controls. Also, functional connectivity between ACC and visual network, DMN and ACC is decreased, however, functional connectivity between DMN and visual network is increased.