Altered Patterns of Dynamic Functional Connectivity Underpin Reduced Expressions of Social-Emotional Reciprocity in Autistic Adults.
Kristína Czekóová, Radek Mareček, Rostislav Staněk and 6 others
PMID 39994920WHAT IT FOUND
Autistic male Responders showed lower reciprocity and less frequent brain network switching during repeated money-sharing than non-autistic Responders.
This is a social reciprocity difference, not a treatment effect.
Key findings
01Autistic Responders showed lower model-based reciprocity estimates than non-autistic Responders (median 0.04 vs 0.13).
02Autistic Responders accepted fair offers less often than non-autistic Responders (median 0.86 vs 1.00 in Proposer-Proposer rounds; 0.88 vs 1.00 in Proposer-Responder rounds), while unfair offer acceptance did not differ significantly.
03Autistic Responders showed lower coverage and occurrence of State 1 and lower transition probabilities between State 1 and State 4 or State 2 and State 1; non-autistic Proposers did not differ.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only male participants were studied, so the results cannot be generalised to autistic females or mixed-sex interactions. The final autistic/non-autistic sample was 16 dyads and the comparison sample was 19 dyads, and the sensitivity analysis indicated that only large effects could be detected reliably. Autistic participants were always Responders and non-autistic participants were always Proposers, so group differences are confounded with task role. Autistic participants had IQ above 80 and no history of substance disorder or epilepsy, so the sample may not represent autistic adults with co-occurring conditions or different cognitive profiles. The brain network parcellation was based on non-autistic samples, and autistic brain network topography may be shifted, which could affect the connectivity results. The hyperconnected State 4 was partly explained by global signal, which may include artefacts such as respiration. No measures of emotion regulation or subjective interaction quality were collected, so those factors could not be examined. The delayed presentation of choices prevented analysis of between-brain coupling during the interaction.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding came from Ministerstvo Školství, Mládeže a Tělovýchovy and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that this identifies a cause of social communication difficulties or a treatment target. It was a small single-session fMRI study of male adults in a game, with autistic participants always responding and non-autistic participants always proposing, so group and role were confounded and no intervention was tested.