TY  - JOUR
Y1  - 2016/10/18/
AV  - public
VL  - 6
TI  - Unsupervised data-driven stratification of mentalizing heterogeneity in autism
N1  - © The Author(s) 2016. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article?s Creative Commons license,
unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/srep35333
SN  - 2045-2322
N2  - Individuals affected by autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are considerably heterogeneous. Novel approaches are needed to parse this heterogeneity to enhance precision in clinical and translational research. Applying a clustering approach taken from genomics and systems biology on two large independent cognitive datasets of adults with and without ASC (n?=?694; n?=?249), we find replicable evidence for 5 discrete ASC subgroups that are highly differentiated in item-level performance on an explicit mentalizing task tapping ability to read complex emotion and mental states from the eye region of the face (Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test; RMET). Three subgroups comprising 45-62% of ASC adults show evidence for large impairments (Cohen's d?=?-1.03 to -11.21), while other subgroups are effectively unimpaired. These findings delineate robust natural subdivisions within the ASC population that may allow for more individualized inferences and accelerate research towards precision medicine goals.
ID  - discovery10071403
A1  - Lombardo, MV
A1  - Lai, M-C
A1  - Auyeung, B
A1  - Holt, RJ
A1  - Allison, C
A1  - Smith, P
A1  - Chakrabarti, B
A1  - Ruigrok, ANV
A1  - Suckling, J
A1  - Bullmore, ET
A1  - MRC AIMS Consortium, .
A1  - Ecker, C
A1  - Craig, MC
A1  - Murphy, DGM
A1  - Happé, F
A1  - Baron-Cohen, S
KW  - autism spectrum disorders
KW  -  human behaviour
JF  - Scientific Reports
ER  -