Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 12, 2025
EEG Mu Rhythm in Typical and Atypical Development
Published on: April 9, 2014
Age-related differences in delta-beta phase-amplitude coupling in autistic individuals
Eleni Kroupi1, Emily Jh Jones2, Bethany Oakley3
1Starlab Barcelona SL, Neuroscience BU, Barcelona, Spain.
Objective:
We aim to investigate the relationship between the core symptoms of autism, anxiety levels, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits, and a non-autism-specific, neurophysiological metric, the Delta-Beta phase-amplitude coupling (PAC), extracted from the resting-state EEG for autistic and non-autistic populations across three different age groups (children, adolescents, and adults).
Methods:
We analyze the eyes-open resting-state EEG of 371 individuals. We applied a phase de-biasing PAC algorithm expected to result in a more accurate PAC estimate than other PAC methodologies available in the literature.
Results:
In the adult group, we found a significant increase of the delta-beta PAC in the autistic subgroup who met the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-2 (ADOS-2) Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADR-R) ADOS-2/ADI-R threshold compared to non-autistic individuals. The differences seem age-specific since we found no statistically significant differences in the children and adolescent populations. Moreover, we found a significant positive correlation with the restricted and repetitive behaviours score of the ADOS-2 diagnostic instrument and with ADHD hyperactivity/impulsivity in the entire autistic cohort.
Conclusions:
The neurophysiological differences we found only in the autistic individuals that meet the thresholds also point out the need for future studies that look for autistic neurodiverse subgroups beyond age.
Significance:
The delta-beta debiasing PAC (dPAC) may potentially serve as a severity biomarker in the autistic population.
