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- Title
Abnormal functional specialization within medial prefrontal cortex in high-functioning autism: a multi-voxel similarity analysis.
- Authors
Sam J. Gilbert; Julia D.I. Meuwese; Karren J. Towgood; Christopher D. Frith; Paul W. Burgess
- Abstract
Multi-voxel pattern analyses have proved successful in ‘decoding’ mental states from fMRI data, but have not been used to examine brain differences associated with atypical populations. We investigated a group of 16 (14 males) high-functioning participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 16 non-autistic control participants (12 males) performing two tasks (spatial/verbal) previously shown to activate medial rostral prefrontal cortex (mrPFC). Each task manipulated: (i) attention towards perceptual versus self-generated information and (ii) reflection on another persons mental state (‘mentalizingversus ‘non-mentalizing’) in a 2 × 2 design. Behavioral performance and group-level fMRI results were similar between groups. However, multi-voxel similarity analyses revealed strong differences. In control participants, the spatial distribution of activity generalized significantly between task contexts (spatial/verbal) when examining the same function (attention/mentalizing) but not when comparing different functions. This pattern was disrupted in the ASD group, indicating abnormal functional specialization within mrPFC, and demonstrating the applicability of multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigations of atypical populations.
- Subjects
PREFRONTAL cortex; AUTISM spectrum disorders; ASPERGER'S syndrome patients; MAGNETIC resonance imaging of the brain; BRAIN physiology; PATTERN perception
- Publication
Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 2009, Vol 132, Issue 4, p869
- ISSN
0006-8950
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/brain/awn365