The Neural Correlates of Emotional Lability in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

• Published in: Brain connectivity Vol. 7; no. 5; pp. 281 - 288
• Main Authors: Bennett, Randi H, Somandepalli, Krishna, Roy, Amy K, Di Martino, Adriana
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Mary Ann Liebert, Inc 01.06.2017
• Subjects: Affective Symptoms - physiopathology; Affective Symptoms - psychology; Amygdala; Amygdala - physiopathology; Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder - physiopathology; Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology; Autistic children; Brain mapping; Brain research; Cerebral Cortex - physiopathology; Child; Child & adolescent psychiatry; Child, Preschool; Children; Children & youth; Cognitive ability; Comorbidity; Connectome - methods; Data processing; Emotions; Female; Frontal gyrus; Functional anatomy; Functional magnetic resonance imaging; Humans; Hyperactivity; Lability; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Nerve Net - physiopathology; Neural networks; Neural Pathways - physiopathology; Neuroimaging; Original; Psychopathology; Visual perception; New York; United States > US; CWAS; emotion dysregulation; emotional lability; autism
• ISSN: 2158-0014; 2158-0022
• DOI: 10.1089/brain.2016.0472

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is exceptionally heterogeneous in both clinical and physiopathological presentations. Clinical variability applies to ASD-specific symptoms and frequent comorbid psychopathology such as emotional lability (EL). To date, the physiopathological underpinnings of the co-occurrence of EL and ASD are unknown. As a first step, we examined within-ASD inter-individual variability of EL and its neuronal correlates using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (R-fMRI). We analyzed R-fMRI data from 58 children diagnosed with ASD (5-12 years) in relation to the Conners' Parent Rating Scale EL index. We performed both an a priori amygdala region-of-interest (ROI) analysis, and a multivariate unbiased whole-brain data-driven approach. While no significant brain-behavior relationships were identified regarding amygdala intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC), multivariate whole-brain analyses revealed an extended functional circuitry centered on two regions: middle frontal gyrus (MFG) and posterior insula (PI). Follow-up parametric and nonparametric ROI-analyses of these regions revealed relationships between EL and MFG- and PI-iFC with default, salience, and visual networks suggesting that higher-order cognitive and somatosensory processes are critical for emotion regulation in ASD. We did not detect evidence of amygdala iFC underpinning EL in ASD. However, exploratory whole-brain analyses identified large-scale networks that have been previously reported abnormal in ASD. Future studies should consider EL as a potential source of neuronal heterogeneity in ASD and focus on multinetwork interactions.