Abnormal Degree Centrality in Children with Low-Function Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Sleeping-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Shoujun Xu; Meng Li; Chunlan Yang; Xiangling Fang; Miaoting Ye; Yunfan Wu; Binrang Yang; Wenxian Huang; Peng Li; Xiaofen Ma; Shishun Fu; Yi Yin; Junzhang Tian; Yungen Gan; Guihua Jiang

doi:10.2147/NDT.S367104

Abnormal Degree Centrality in Children with Low-Function Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Sleeping-State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2022 Jul 5:18:1363-1374. doi: 10.2147/NDT.S367104. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Shoujun Xu^#¹, Meng Li^#², Chunlan Yang³, Xiangling Fang⁴, Miaoting Ye⁴, Yunfan Wu², Binrang Yang⁴, Wenxian Huang⁴, Peng Li¹, Xiaofen Ma², Shishun Fu², Yi Yin², Junzhang Tian², Yungen Gan¹, Guihua Jiang²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Radiology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
² Department of Medical Imaging, Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Hematology and Oncology, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.
⁴ Department of Department of Children Healthcare, Shenzhen Children's Hospital, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: This study used the graph-theory approach, degree centrality (DC) to analyze whole-brain functional networks at the voxel level in children with ASD, and investigated whether DC changes were correlated with any clinical variables in ASD children.

Methods: The current study included 86 children with ASD and 54 matched healthy subjects Aged 2-5.5 years. Next, chloral hydrate induced sleeping-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (ss-fMRI) datasets were acquired from these ASD and healthy subjects. For a given voxel, the DC was calculated by calculating the number of functional connections with significantly positive correlations at the individual level. Group differences were tested using two-sample t-tests (p < 0.01, AlphaSim corrected). Finally, relationships between abnormal DCs and clinical variables were investigated via Pearson's correlation analysis.

Results: Children with ASD exhibited low DC values in the right middle frontal gyrus (MFG) (p < 0.01, AlphaSim corrected). Furthermore, significantly negative correlations were established between the decreased average DC values within the right MFG in ASD children and the total ABC scores, as well as with two ABC subscales measuring highly relevant impairments in ASD (ie, stereotypes and object-use behaviors and difficulties in language).

Conclusion: Taken together, the results of our ss-fMRI study suggest that abnormal DC may represent an important contribution to elucidation of the neuropathophysiological mechanisms of preschoolers with ASD.

Keywords: ASD; DC; Degree centrality; Pearson’s correlation analysis; autism spectrum disorders; fMRI; functional magnetic resonance imaging; whole-brain functional networks.

Grants and funding

This study has received funding by the Sanming Project of Medicine in Shenzhen (Grant No. SZSM202011005), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 81701111, 81771807 and 81901729) and the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (Grant Nos. 2017A020215077).