Background: The promise of precision medicine for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) hinges on developing neuroscience-informed individualized interventions. Taking an important step in this direction, we investigated neuroplasticity in response to an ecologically-valid, computer-based social-cognitive training (SCOTT).
Methods: In an active control group design, 48 adults with ASD were randomly assigned to a 3-month SCOTT or non-social computer training. Participants completed behavioral tasks, a functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging session before and after the training period.
Results: The SCOTT group showed social-cognitive improvements on close and distant generalization tasks. The improvements scaled with reductions in functional activity and increases in cortical thickness in prefrontal regions.
Conclusion: In sum, we provide evidence for the sensitivity of neuroscientific methods to reflect training-induced social-cognitive improvements in adults with ASD. These results encourage the use of neuroimaging data to describe and quantify treatment-related changes more broadly.
Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; MRI; individualized medicine; intervention; neuroplasticity; social cognition.