Parametric fMRI analysis of videos of variable arousal levels reveals different dorsal vs ventral activation preferences between autism and controls

• Published in: 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) Vol. 2021; pp. 6412 - 6415
• Main Authors: Agostinho, Daniel, Correia, Rita, Catarina Duarte, Isabel, Sousa, Daniela, Abreu, Rodolfo, Pina Rodrigues, Ana, Castelo-Branco, Miguel, Simoes, Marco
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States IEEE 01.11.2021
• Subjects: Arousal; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder - diagnostic imaging; Autistic Disorder - diagnostic imaging; Biology; Emotions; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Process control; Regulation; Task analysis; Videos
• ISSN: 2694-0604
• DOI: 10.1109/EMBC46164.2021.9630013

Atypical sensory processing is now considered a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is responsible for the atypical sensory-based behaviours seen in these individuals. Specifically, emotional arousal is a critical ASD target since it comprises emotion regulation and sensory processing, two core aspects of autism. So, in this project, we used task-based fMRI and a well-catalogued dataset of videos with variable arousal levels to characterize the sensory processing of emotional arousal content in ASD and typically developed controls. Our analysis revealed a difference in the secondary attention network where ASD individuals showed a clear yet lateralized preference to the dorsal attention network, whereas the neurotypical individuals preferred the ventral attention network.