Anomalous Pattern of Left Hemisphere Visual Connectivity in Children With Autism: Association With Impaired Praxis.
Jonah McLaughlin, Deana Crocetti, Stewart H Mostofsky and 1 others
PMID 41317026WHAT IT FOUND
Children with autism showed a left-hemisphere visual-motor connectivity pattern: weaker links between visual and motor cortex, stronger links to prefrontal cortex.
Weaker visual-motor links were linked to more skilled movement errors in autism, but not in typically developing children.
Key findings
01On the primary praxis outcome, children with autism made more errors than typically developing children.
02Compared with typically developing children, children with autism showed lower visual-motor connectivity and higher visual-prefrontal connectivity, mainly in the left hemisphere.
03In the left hemisphere, stronger visual-motor connectivity was linked to better skilled movement performance in children with autism but worse performance in typically developing children.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
The study measured brain connectivity and praxis at one time point, so it cannot show that the connectivity pattern causes praxis difficulty. Praxis scores were available for only 293 of 427 children because of visit time limits, so the praxis association is based on a smaller group. The autism group was school-age and mostly had at least normal-range IQ, so the results may not apply to younger children or children with intellectual disability. The connectivity pattern was not associated with autism symptom severity scores, so it does not explain the social communication or repetitive behaviour features of autism. The right hemisphere did not show the same diagnosis-by-region pattern as the left hemisphere.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest. Funding was provided by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Simons Foundation, The Eagles Autism Foundation, and the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use this to diagnose a child or choose a therapy. It is a group association from brain scans at one time point, and it does not show that changing connectivity improves praxis.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →