Inhibition, an important cognitive skill relying on frontal lobe function, is often deficient in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Spatiotemporal measures of brain activity were acquired using magnetoencephalography during a Go/No-go task with adolescents and adults with ASD and matched controls. During the task, participants responded to Go stimuli and withheld their response to No-go stimuli. Typical inhibitory network development was investigated in study 1. Adolescents displayed a distributed activity pattern, recruiting temporal and parietal regions, in addition to frontal areas, unlike adults. In study 2, inhibition was compared between individuals with and without ASD. Lateralization differences were found: adults with ASD activated the left and control adults recruited the right inferior prefrontal cortex. Adolescents with ASD recruited predominantly frontal regions, unlike their controls. Implications include immature inhibitory networks in typical adolescence and deficits in adolescents with ASD in recruiting distal cortical regions to supplement poor frontal lobe function.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/33572 |
| Date | 27 November 2012 |
| Creators | Varatharajah, Sinthujah |
| Contributors | Anagnostou, Evdokia, Taylor, Margot |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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