Autistic children face difficulties in switching from rest to work, says a new research by the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Researchers explain that brains of children with autism are comparatively inflexible about taking on tasks from a resting state. For the study, the researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the brains of 68 children with and without autism while they were performing two tasks.
"We wanted to test the idea that a flexible brain is necessary for flexible behaviors," said Lucina Uddin, PhD, lead author of the study, in the press release. "What we found was that across a set of brain connections known to be important for switching between different tasks, children with autism showed reduced 'brain flexibility' compared with typically developing peers."
Participating children performed two tasks. In the first task they were told to solve simple mathematical problems; the second assignment required them to look at pictures of people's faces. Researchers concentrated on a network of brain areas associated with decision making, performing social tasks and detecting events within the environment to help guide social behaviors.
The results showed that performance of children with autism was at par with children without autism in both tasks. But, the fMRIs found that autistic children had similar connections in these brain areas when their brains were resting and when they were performing a task. In children without the condition, researchers found increased brain connectivity when they were performing a task.
The researchers also found a positive correlation between the degree of inflexibility and the severity of restrictive and repetitive habits.
"This is the first study that has examined how the patterns of intrinsic brain connectivity change with a cognitive load in children with autism," said senior author of the study, Vinod Menon, PhD, the Rachel L. and Walter F. Nichols, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. "We're making progress in identifying a brain basis of autism, and we're starting to get traction in pinpointing systems and signaling mechanisms that are not functioning properly. This is giving us a better handle both in thinking about treatment and in looking at change or plasticity in the brain."
The study was published in the journal, Cerebral Cortex.
