Inter-Regional Brain Communication and Its Disturbance in Autism

In this review article, we summarize recent progress toward understanding disturbances in functional and anatomical brain connectivity in autism. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting language, social interaction, and repetitive behaviors. Recent studies have suggested that limitations of frontal-posterior brain connectivity in autism underlie the varied set of deficits associated with this disorder. Specifically, the underconnectivity theory of autism postulates that individuals with autism have a reduced communication bandwidth between frontal and posterior cortical areas, which constrains the psychological processes that rely on the integrated functioning of frontal and posterior brain networks. This review summarizes the recent findings of reduced frontal-posterior functional connectivity (synchronization) in autism in a wide variety of high-level tasks, focusing on data from functional magnetic resonance imaging studies. It also summarizes the findings of disordered anatomical connectivity in autism, as measured by a variety of techniques, including distribution of white matter volumes and diffusion tensor imaging. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for autism and future directions for this line of research.