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PMID: 16702548 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

Failing to deactivate: resting functional abnormalities in autism.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ·Vol. 103 ·No. 21 ·2006-05-23 ·Pages 8275-80

Kennedy DP, Redcay E, Courchesne E

Abstract

Several regions of the brain (including medial prefrontal cortex, rostral anterior cingulate, posterior cingulate, and precuneus) are known to have high metabolic activity during rest, which is suppressed during cognitively demanding tasks. With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this suppression of activity is observed as "deactivations," which are thought to be indicative of an interruption of the mental activity that persists during rest. Thus, measuring deactivation provides a means by which rest-associated functional activity can be quantitatively examined. Applying this approach to autism, we found that the autism group failed to demonstrate this deactivation effect. Furthermore, there was a strong correlation between a clinical measure of social impairment and functional activity within the ventral medial prefrontal cortex. We speculate that the lack of deactivation in the autism group is indicative of abnormal internally directed processes at rest, which may be an important contribution to the social and emotional deficits of autism.

MeSH Terms
Adult Asperger Syndrome/metabolism,physiopathology Attention Autistic Disorder/metabolism,physiopathology Brain/pathology Brain Mapping/methods Humans Magnetic Resonance Imaging/methods Models, Neurological Motor Activity Neural Pathways Photic Stimulation Prefrontal Cortex/pathology Psychomotor Performance
Authors & Affiliations
3 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Kennedy Daniel P
Department of Neurosciences, and Psychology, University of California at San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. dkennedy@ucsd.edu
Redcay Elizabeth
Courchesne Eric
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Article Info
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Abbr.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
ISSN
0027-8424
DOI
10.1073/pnas.0600674103
Email
dkennedy@ucsd.edu
Published
2006-05-23
Epub
2006-00-15
Pages
8275-80
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
7505876
PMCID
PMC1472462
Subset
IM
Grants
NIMH NIH HHS · R01 MH036840 · United States
NIMH NIH HHS · R01 MH36840 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0600674103 PMC Full Text View journal details
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