Investigating sensory response to physical discomfort in children with autism spectrum disorder using near-infrared spectroscopy

Figures

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  Fig 1. Experimental setup a) view from behind the participant and b) schematic of instrumentation from above.

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  Fig 2. Timing of the experimental paradigm. Note that the order of the cold and control conditions were randomized.

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  Fig 3. Source-detector configuration. Three grids of NIR emitters and photodetectors were placed on the participant’s head over the a) prefrontal and b) right and left parietal cortices. Each shaded circle (18) represents the location of an emitter in the configuration, and each unshaded circle (15) represents a photo detector. Each ‘x’ represents a measurement channel. Locations in the 10–20 International System are demarcated with an ‘*’.

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  Fig 4. Duration of each of the three cold-water trials for a) TD participants b) participants with ASD and c) across-group averages. Error bars represent standard error of the mean. * indicates participant excluded from analysis of functional brain data.

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  Fig 5. Across-participant average functional brain response a) from the full task trials and b) from the first 60s of the task trials. The peak relative [HbO] of the cold-water or tepid-water trials were average for each of the cold-water and tepid-water trials for each of the 4 brain regions, for each study group. Error bars represent standard error of the mean.

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  Fig 6. Average across-participant brain response to noxious cold stimulus for each study group in the left prefrontal, right prefrontal, left parietal and right parietal cortices. Average oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin ([HbO] and [Hb], respectively) responses are plotted with shaded areas representing standard error the mean for each time point. Dashed vertical lines indicate the 60s mark of the trial.