Gilbert, SJ and Meuwese, JDI and Towgood, KJ and Frith, CD and Burgess, PW (2009) Abnormal functional specialization within medial prefrontal cortex in high-functioning autism: a multi-voxel similarity analysis. BRAIN , 132 869 - 878. 10.1093/brain/awn365.
![[img]](/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png)
| PDF - Requires a PDF viewer such as GSview, Xpdf or Adobe Acrobat Reader 446Kb |
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.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Abnormal functional specialization within medial prefrontal cortex in high-functioning autism: a multi-voxel similarity analysis |
| Open access status: | An open access publication. A version is also available from UCL Discovery. |
| DOI: | 10.1093/brain/awn365 |
| Publisher version: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC2668942/?tool=pubmed |
| Keywords: | Asperger syndrome, autism, Brodmann Area 10, fMRI, medial prefrontal cortex, EXECUTIVE FUNCTION, SPECTRUM DISORDERS, PROSPECTIVE MEMORY, MENTAL STATES, HUMAN BRAIN, FMRI, REGIONS, AREA-10 |
| UCL classification: | UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Psychology and Language Sciences (Division of) > Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Institute of Neurology UCL > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences |
View download statistics for this itemArchive Staff Only: edit this record