Functional Neuroimaging of Prefrontal Cortex Activity During a Problem Solving Versus Motor Task in Children With and Without Autism (original) (raw)

2018

Abstract

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized with deficits in social communication, repetitive behavioral patterns, and, frequently, movement dysfunction. Researchers have linked some of these issues to atypical prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity. However, it is unclear if what role (if any) the PFC plays in motor dysfunction seen in this population. In the current study, we use functional near infrared spectroscopy to compare prefrontal cortex oxygenation in boys with (n = 10) and without (n = 10) ASD, as they performed two tasks with similar movement requirements but varying levels of executive function (a computer-based Tower of Hanoi (TOH) disk-transfer task and a self-paced tapping task). Participants with ASD used significantly more moves than typically developing (TD) participants on the three-disk level (P = .012). 70% of TD and 33% of ASD participants completed the four-disk level and did not differ in number of moves. Number of taps did not differ between groups (TD: 216.7 ± 73.4; ASD: 206.3 ± 69.0). A significant interaction between group and task was found in Δdeoxy-Hb (P = .005). There was no interaction between group and task in Δoxy-Hb. Our results indicate that the ASD group used a different strategy to solve the TOH task. Furthermore, the lower performance scores in the cognitive task combined with different oxygenation measures suggest they had difficulty in organizing and planning during the TOH task.

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