2014 International Meeting for Autism Research

May 14 - 17, 2014

Research involving older children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has identified a range of atypicalities in brain structural and functional connectivity. However, little is known about how and when connectivity becomes implicated in the emergence of ASD between 6 and 24 months. These questions are addressed in this panel through multimodal imaging studies encompassing structural and functional connectivity analysis in infants at high risk for ASD and controls. These studies investigate changes in resting state connectivity, and various aspects of diffusion-based structural connectivity and white matter organization via tract-based morphometry, analysis of network metrics and full brain connectomics, to present a comprehensive characterization of connectivity changes during this critical developmental period. Our data demonstrate that changes in connectivity emerge over this period and parallel the timing of group differences in behavior, with differences in early sensory motor areas apparent at 6 months and higher order brain areas implicated at 12-24 months, as more complex social impairments appear. These studies provide important new information relevant to: 1) understanding underlying neural mechanisms in ASD, 2) very early developmental trajectories that are potential target phenotypes for exploring links to etiology and teasing apart heterogeneity, and 3) early detection and intervention targets.