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Brain Advance Access published online on January 27, 2009
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awn365
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Abnormal functional specialization within medial prefrontal cortex in high-functioning autism: a multi-voxel similarity analysis

Sam J. Gilbert1, Julia D.I. Meuwese1, Karren J. Towgood1, Christopher D. Frith2,3 and Paul W. Burgess1

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK 2 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK 3 Center for Functional Integrative Neuroscience, University of Aarhus, Denmark

Correspondence to: Dr Sam Gilbert, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK E-mail: sam.gilbert{at}ucl.ac.uk

Multi-voxel pattern analyses have proved successful in ‘decoding’ mental states from fMRI data, but have not been used to examine brain differences associated with atypical populations. We investigated a group of 16 (14 males) high-functioning participants with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and 16 non-autistic control participants (12 males) performing two tasks (spatial/verbal) previously shown to activate medial rostral prefrontal cortex (mrPFC). Each task manipulated: (i) attention towards perceptual versus self-generated information and (ii) reflection on another person's mental state (‘mentalizing'versus ‘non-mentalizing’) in a 2 x 2 design. Behavioral performance and group-level fMRI results were similar between groups. However, multi-voxel similarity analyses revealed strong differences. In control participants, the spatial distribution of activity generalized significantly between task contexts (spatial/verbal) when examining the same function (attention/mentalizing) but not when comparing different functions. This pattern was disrupted in the ASD group, indicating abnormal functional specialization within mrPFC, and demonstrating the applicability of multi-voxel pattern analysis to investigations of atypical populations.

Key Words: Asperger syndrome; autism; Brodmann Area 10; fMRI; medial prefrontal cortex

Abbreviations: ASD, autism spectrum disorder; mrPFC, medial rostral prefrontal cortex; SI, stimulus-independent; SO, stimulus-oriented

Received August 18, 2008. Revised December 10, 2008. Accepted December 19, 2008.


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