Reduced modulation of thalamocortical connectivity during exposure to sensory stimuli in ASD.
Shulamite A Green, Leanna Hernandez, Susan Y Bookheimer and 1 others
PMID 27896947WHAT IT FOUND
Youth with autism had smaller changes in thalamus-cortex connectivity during scratchy fabric plus traffic sounds than controls.
Their thalamus-amygdala connectivity increased during the task, and it tracked sensory over-responsivity across the sample. No treatment tested.
Key findings
01During the combined sound-and-touch condition, controls showed more extensive positive and negative pulvinar connectivity changes than the autism group, which showed increases only with right temporal cortex.
02The autism group showed increased connectivity between the pulvinar and right amygdala during the combined condition.
03Across the sample, pulvinar-right amygdala connectivity was positively associated with sensory over-responsivity, but this association was not significant within the autism group alone.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The sample was small, which limited power to find within-group links with sensory over-responsivity; the pulvinar-amygdala association was significant only across the combined sample and not within the autism group alone. The study had relatively low power for between-group differences, and some connectivity differences did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. The main connectivity pattern was specific to the combined auditory and tactile condition; the separate sound and touch conditions did not show the same pattern. The methods were not sensitive enough to examine particular pulvinar nuclei.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that a sensory therapy works or that autism causes a fixed thalamus problem. It is a small brain-imaging study of connectivity during one combined sound and touch task, and it tested no intervention.