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Updated: Aug 23, 2026
Using the Visual World Paradigm to Study Sentence Comprehension in Mandarin-Speaking Children with Autism
Published on: October 3, 2018
Cortical activation and synchronization during sentence comprehension in high-functioning autism: evidence of
Marcel Adam Just1, Vladimir L Cherkassky, Timothy A Keller
1Carnegie Mellon University, Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging, Department of Psychology, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. just@cmu.edu
Abstract:
The brain activation of a group of high-functioning autistic participants was measured using functional MRI during sentence comprehension and the results compared with those of a Verbal IQ-matched control group. The groups differed in the distribution of activation in two of the key language areas. The autism group produced reliably more activation than the control group in Wernicke's (left laterosuperior temporal) area and reliably less activation than the control group in Broca's (left inferior frontal gyrus) area. Furthermore, the functional connectivity, i.e. the degree of synchronization or correlation of the time series of the activation, between the various participating cortical areas was consistently lower for the autistic than the control participants. These findings suggest that the neural basis of disordered language in autism entails a lower degree of information integration and synchronization across the large-scale cortical network for language processing. The article presents a theoretical account of the findings, related to neurobiological foundations of underconnectivity in autism.
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