Reduced interhemispheric functional connectivity of children with autism spectrum disorder: evidence from functional near infrared spectroscopy studies

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder, which has been associated with atypical neural synchronization. In this study, functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to study the differences in functional connectivity in bilateral inferior frontal cortices (IFC) and bilateral temporal cortices (TC) between ASD and typically developing (TD) children between 8 and 11 years of age. As the first report of fNIRS study on the resting state functional connectivity (RSFC) in children with ASD, ten children with ASD and ten TD children were recruited in this study for 8 minute resting state measurement. Compared to TD children, children with ASD showed reduced interhemispheric connectivity in TC. Children with ASD also showed significantly lower local connectivity in bilateral temporal cortices. In contrast to TD children, children with ASD did not show typical patterns of symmetry in functional connectivity in temporal cortex. These results support the feasibility of using the fNIRS method to assess atypical functional connectivity of cortical responses of ASD and its potential application in diagnosis.