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Altered Cerebellum Spontaneous Activity in Juvenile Autism Spectrum Disorders Associated with Clinical Traits

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Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder. The associations between the cerebellum and clinical traits remain unclear. We performed amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis to explore the associations between spontaneous brain activity and clinical traits. 361 juvenile ASD patients were included from the ABIDEII database. In the ASD group, the mean ALFF values of cerebellum 4 5 were correlated with SRS awareness and communication. The mean ALFF values of cerebellum 6 and vermis 4 5 were both positively correlated with SRS total, awareness, communication, and motivation. In contrast, the mean ALFF values of vermis 1 2 were negatively correlated with SRS total, awareness, and mannerisms. Our study suggests a role of the cerebellum in functional impairments in ASD.

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Data Availability

The data used are publicly available in the ABIDE II database (http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/abide/abide_II.html). The IDs of the subjects used in the study are listed in Appendix 1.

Abbreviations

ASD:

Autism spectrum disorder

ALFF:

Amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations

ReHo:

Regional homogeneity

fMRI:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging

ROI:

Region of interest

SRS:

Social responsiveness scale

FC:

Functional connectivity

AAL3:

Automated anatomical labelling 3

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Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge members of the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange and the International Neuroimaging Data-sharing Initiative for their efforts to aggregate and organize phenotypic and imaging data. We thank the Youth Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81804198) and the Special Training Program for Young Scientific and Technological Talents of Southwest Medical University 2020–2022 for sponsorship of Jianghai Ruan.

Funding

This work was supported by the Youth Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (81804198), Funding of Human Resources and Social Security Department, Sichuan (2018-145, 65), and Youth Fund of Southwest Medical University (2018-ZRQN-003). We thank the Special Training Program for Young Scientific and Technological Talents of Southwest Medical University 2020–2022 for sponsorship of Jianghai Ruan.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurology, The Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Taiping Street No.25, Luzhou, 646000, China

    Jinglun Li, Xiu Chen, Yan Zhou & Jianghai Ruan

  2. Laboratory of Neurological Diseases and Brain Function, Luzhou, 646000, China

    Jinglun Li, Xiu Chen, Yan Zhou & Jianghai Ruan

  3. Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, Dongfang Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, Beijing, 100071, China

    Ruwen Zheng

  4. Department of Pediatric, Sichuan Provincial Hospital for Women and Children, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Ai Chen

  5. Sichuan Clinical Research Center for Birth Defects, Luzhou, 646000, China

    Ai Chen

  6. Department of Neurology, Jianyang People’s Hospital, Jianyang, 646000, China

    Yan Zhou

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  1. Jinglun Li
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  2. Xiu Chen
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  4. Ai Chen
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  5. Yan Zhou
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Contributions

JL: data curation, methodology, formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing. XC: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, writing—original draft. RZ: conceptualization, data curation, writing—review & editing. AC: conceptualization, methodology, writing—review & editing. YZ: methodology, data curation, formal analysis. JR: conceptualization, methodology, supervision, writing—review & editing, funding acquisition.

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Correspondence to Jianghai Ruan.

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The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University (Luzhou, China).

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Li, J., Chen, X., Zheng, R. et al. Altered Cerebellum Spontaneous Activity in Juvenile Autism Spectrum Disorders Associated with Clinical Traits. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 2497–2504 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05167-6

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