Page 48 - MEGIN Book Of Abstracts - 2023

the frequency band(s) in which functional connectivity Keywords: Alpha, Autism, Connectivity, Go/No-go, Inhibi-
underlying response inhibition occurs, as brain func- tion, MEG
tions are frequency specific, and whether connectivity
in certain frequency bands differs between adults with Molecular autism (2020), Vol. 11, No. 1 (33287904) (0
and without ASD. citations)

METHODS We analysed MEG data from 40 adults with
ASD (27 males; 26.94 ± 6.08 years old) and 39 control Predictive Processing during a Naturalistic
adults (27 males; 27.29 ± 5.94 years old) who performed Statistical Learning Task in ASD (2020)
a Go/No-go task. The task involved two blocks with
different proportions of No-go trials: Inhibition (25% Wagley, Neelima; Lajiness-O'Neill, Renee; Hay, Jessica S
No-go) and Vigilance (75% No-go). We compared F; Ugolini, Margaret; Bowyer, Susan M; Kovelman, Ioulia;
whole-brain connectivity in the two groups during Brennan, Jonathan R
correct No-go trials in the Inhibition vs. Vigilance blocks
between 0 and 400 ms. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Ar-
bor, MI 48109; Department of Psychology, Eastern Michigan
RESULTS Despite comparable performance on the Go/ University, Ypsilanti, MI 48197; Department of Psychology,
No-go task, adults with ASD showed reduced connec- University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996; Department of
tivity compared to controls in the alpha band (8-14 Hz) Neurology, Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit, MI 48202; Depart-
in a network with a main hub in the right inferior ment of Linguistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
frontal gyrus. Decreased connectivity in this network 48109 [email protected] [email protected]
predicted more self-reported difficulties on a measure
of inhibition in everyday life. ABSTRACT Children's sensitivity to regularities within
the linguistic stream, such as the likelihood that syl-
LIMITATIONS Measures of everyday inhibitory control lables co-occur, is foundational to speech segmenta-
were not available for all participants, so this relation- tion and language acquisition. Yet, little is known about
ship between reduced network connectivity and inhibi- the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying speech
tory control abilities may not be necessarily representa- segmentation in typical development and in neurode-
tive of all adults with ASD or the larger ASD population. velopmental disorders that impact language acquisi-
Further research with independent samples of adults tion such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, we
with ASD, including those with a wider range of cogni- investigate the neural signals of statistical learning in
tive abilities, would be valuable. 15 human participants (children ages 8-12) with a clini-
cal diagnosis of ASD and 14 age-matched and gender-
CONCLUSIONS Our findings demonstrate reduced matched typically developing peers. We tracked the
functional brain connectivity during response inhibi- evoked neural responses to syllable sequences in a
tion in adults with ASD. As alpha-band synchrony has naturalistic statistical learning corpus using magneto-
been linked to top-down control mechanisms, we encephalography (MEG) in the left primary auditory
propose that the lack of alpha synchrony observed in cortex, posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG), and
our ASD group may reflect difficulties in suppressing inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), across three repetitions
task-irrelevant information, interfering with inhibition of the passage. In typically developing children, we
in real-life situations. observed a neural index of learning in all three regions
of interest (ROIs), measured by the change in evoked
response amplitude as a function of syllable surprisal
across passage repetitions. As surprisal increased, the
amplitude of the neural response increased; this sensi-
tivity emerged after repeated exposure to the corpus.

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