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Patterns of brain activity in people with autism are unusually consistent over seconds—and even years, two new studies suggest.
One study shows that patterns of connectivity remain stable in autistic adolescents, whereas they tend to change and specialize in controls. The other study found that connections remain fixed longer in people with autism than in controls. Both focused on so-called “functional connectivity,” the extent to which the activity of pairs of brain areas is synchronized.
Together, the studies may help untangle seemingly contradictory findings on connectivity in autism: reports of both underconnectivity and overconnectivity in the brain.
“Maybe the primary abnormality isn’t just that things are too weakly or strongly connected, that it has more to do with the timing of brain connections,” says Jeff Anderson, professor of radiology at the University of Utah, who led the second study.
The studies also highlight the importance of ...
