ArticleAutism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research2021
Children with autism spectrum disorder show altered functional connectivity and abnormal maturation trajectories in response to inverted faces.
Article in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- Presymptomatic Biological, Structural, and Functional Diagnostic Biomarkers of Autism Spectrum Disorder.Journal of neurochemistry · 2025Pooled it
- Oxytocin impacts top-down and bottom-up social perception in adolescents with ASD: a MEG study of neural connectivity.Molecular autism · 2022Trial
- Autism spectrum disorder disrupts brain network connectivity maturation during childhood development.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Lower Cortical Activation and Altered Functional Connectivity Characterize Passive Auditory Spatial Attention in ASD.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Altered oscillatory coupling reflects possible inhibitory interneuron dysfunction in Rett syndrome.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Lower cortical activation and altered functional connectivity characterize passive auditory spatial attention in ASD.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Characterizing Directional Dynamics of Semantic Prediction Based on Inter-regional Temporal Generalization.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Paediatric magnetoencephalography and its role in neurodevelopmental disorders.The British journal of radiology · 2024Review
- Article
- Both stronger and weaker cerebro-cerebellar functional connectivity patterns during processing of spoken sentences in autism spectrum disorder.Human brain mapping · 2023Article
- Functional Significance of Human Resting-State Networks Hubs Identified Using MEG During the Transition From Childhood to Adulthood.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
- The Atypical Effective Connectivity of Right Temporoparietal Junction in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Multi-Site Study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
- The Directionality of Fronto-Posterior Brain Connectivity Is Associated with the Degree of Individual Autistic Traits.Brain sciences · 2021Article
- Altered maturation and atypical cortical processing of spoken sentences in autism spectrum disorder.Progress in neurobiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The processing of information conveyed by faces is a critical component of social communication. While the neurophysiology of processing upright faces has been studied extensively in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), less is known about the neurophysiological abnormalities associated with processing inverted faces in ASD. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to study both long-range and local functional connectivity, with the latter assessed using local cross-frequency coupling, in response to inverted faces stimuli, in 7-18 years old individuals with ASD and age and IQ matched typically developing (TD) individuals. We found abnormally reduced coupling between the phase of the alpha rhythm and the amplitude of the gamma rhythm in the fusiform face area (FFA) in response to inverted faces, as well as reduced long-range functional connectivity between the FFA and the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in response to inverted faces in the ASD group. These group differences were absent in response to upright faces. The magnitude of functional connectivity between the FFA and the IFG was significantly correlated with the severity of ASD, and FFA-IFG long-range functional connectivity increased with age in TD group, but not in the ASD group. Our findings suggest that both local and long-range functional connectivity are abnormally reduced in children with ASD when processing inverted faces, and that the pattern of abnormalities associated with the processing of inverted faces differs from the pattern of upright faces in ASD, likely due to the presumed greater reliance on top-down regulations necessary for efficient processing of inverted faces. LAY SUMMARY: We found alterations in the neurophysiological responses to inverted faces in children with ASD, that were not reflected in the evoked responses, and were not observed in the responses to upright faces. These alterations included reduced local functional connectivity in the fusiform face area (FFA), and decreased long-range alpha-band modulated functional connectivity between the FFA and the left IFG. The magnitude of long-range functional connectivity between the FFA and the inferior frontal gyrus was correlated with the severity of ASD.
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