Abstract
An emerging focus of research on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) targets the identification of early-developing ASD endophenotypes using infant siblings of affected children. One potential neural endophenotype is resting frontal electroencephalogram (EEG) alpha asymmetry, a metric of hemispheric organization. Here, we examined the development of frontal EEG alpha asymmetry in ASD high-risk and low-risk infant populations. Our findings demonstrate that low and high-risk infants show different patterns of alpha asymmetry at 6 months of age and opposite growth trajectories in asymmetry over the following 12 months. These results support the candidacy of alpha asymmetry as an early neural ASD endophenotype.
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Notes
At the start of the project, we used the 64-channel Geodesic Sensor Nets at each testing session, but 2 years into the project, we changed to the 128-channel HydroCell Geodesic Sensor nets. In order to ensure that this equipment change did not influence our results, we assessed whether there were any differences in asymmetry scores between the two nets, but found no statistically significant difference (t(41) = 0.68, p = 0.500). We also determined that the type of net used was distributed equally across age and risk groups.
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Funding was provided by Grants from NIDCD R21 DC 08637 and Autism Speaks to HTF, from NIDCD RO1 DC 10290 and the Simon’s Foundation to CAN and HTF, and from the Sackler Scholar Programme in Psychobiology to AT.
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Gabard-Durnam, L., Tierney, A.L., Vogel-Farley, V. et al. Alpha Asymmetry in Infants at Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorders. J Autism Dev Disord 45, 473–480 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1926-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-013-1926-4