Watching Together, Yet Feeling Apart: Interpersonal Neural Synchronization as a Marker of Symptom Severity in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder During Naturalistic Viewing
Demonstrates reduced interpersonal neural synchronization in children with autism, highlighting neural connections involved in empathy.
Key Points
To investigate the relationship between interpersonal neural synchronization and symptom severity in children with autism spectrum disorder during viewing with their mothers.
Conducted fNIRS hyperscanning to measure brain activity in children with ASD and typical development while viewing a film with mothers.
Analyzed interpersonal neural synchronization in the frontopolar area and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) during empathy-related scenes.
Performed inter-brain functional connectivity analysis during naturalistic viewing events.
Utilized support vector machine classification to distinguish between ASD and typical development based on INS features.
Children with ASD showed significantly reduced interpersonal neural synchronization compared to typical development children, particularly in the right DLPFC.
Right DLPFC synchronization negatively correlated with ASD symptom severity, indicating more desynchronization in those with severe symptoms.
Enhanced INS was observed in typical development children during empathy-related scenes, contrasting with reduced INS in ASD dyads.
INS features could effectively classify children with ASD from typical development using machine learning techniques.