Altered Connectivity During a False-Belief Task in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Deficits in social communication are one of the main features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Adults with ASD show atypical brain activity during false-belief understanding, an aspect of social communication involving the ability to infer that an individual can have an incorrect belief about a situation. Our study is the first to investigate whether adults with ASD exhibit differences in frequency-specific functional connectivity patterns during false-belief reasoning.

We used magnetoencephalography to contrast functional connectivity underlying false-belief understanding between 40 adults with ASD and 39 control adults. We examined whole-brain phase synchrony measures during a false-belief task in 3 frequency bands: theta (4-7 Hz), alpha (8-14 Hz), and beta (15-30 Hz).

Adults with ASD demonstrated reduced theta-band connectivity compared with control adults between several right-lateralized and midline regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex, right temporoparietal junction, right inferior frontal gyrus, and right superior temporal gyrus. During false-belief trials, they also recruited a network in the beta band that included primary visual regions such as the bilateral inferior occipital gyri and the left anterior temporoparietal junction.

Reduced theta-band synchrony between areas associated with mentalizing, inhibition, and visual processing implies some difficulty in communication among these functions in ASD. This impairment in top-down control in the theta band may be counterbalanced by their engagement of a beta-band network because both the left anterior temporoparietal junction and beta-band oscillations are associated with attentional processes. Thus, adults with ASD demonstrate alternative neural mechanisms for successful false-belief reasoning.