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Intrinsic excitation-inhibition imbalance affects medial prefrontal cortex differently in autistic men versus women
Journal article

Intrinsic excitation-inhibition imbalance affects medial prefrontal cortex differently in autistic men versus women

  • Trakoshis, Stavros Department of Psychology, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
  • Martínez-Cañada, Pablo Optical Approaches to Brain Function Laboratory, Department of Neuroscience and Brain Technologies, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy
  • Rocchi, Federico Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems @UniTn, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rovereto, Italy
  • Canella, Carola Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems @UniTn, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rovereto, Italy
  • You, Wonsang Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing Laboratory, Department of Information and Communications Engineering, Sun Moon University, Asan, Republic of Korea
  • Chakrabarti, Bhismadev Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading, United Kingdom
  • Ruigrok, Amber NV Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Bullmore, Edward T Brain Mapping Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Suckling, John Brain Mapping Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Markicevic, Marija Neuroscience Center Zurich, University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Zerbi, Valerio ORCID Neuroscience Center Zurich, University and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  • Baron-Cohen, Simon Cambridgeshire and Peterborough National Health Service Foundation Trust, Cambridge, United Kingdom
  • Gozzi, Alessandro ORCID Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems @UniTn, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rovereto, Italy
  • Lai, Meng-Chuan Department of Psychiatry, National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, Taipei, Taiwan
  • Panzeri, Stefano ORCID Neural Computation Laboratory, Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Systems @UniTn, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Rovereto, Italy
  • Lombardo, Michael V ORCID Autism Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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  • 2020-8-4
Published in:
  • eLife. - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd. - 2020, vol. 9
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Immunology and Microbiology
General Neuroscience
General Medicine
English Excitation-inhibition (E:I) imbalance is theorized as an important pathophysiological mechanism in autism. Autism affects males more frequently than females and sex-related mechanisms (e.g., X-linked genes, androgen hormones) can influence E:I balance. This suggests that E:I imbalance may affect autism differently in males versus females. With a combination of in-silico modeling and in-vivo chemogenetic manipulations in mice, we first show that a time-series metric estimated from fMRI BOLD signal, the Hurst exponent (H), can be an index for underlying change in the synaptic E:I ratio. In autism we find that H is reduced, indicating increased excitation, in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) of autistic males but not females. Increasingly intact MPFC H is also associated with heightened ability to behaviorally camouflage social-communicative difficulties, but only in autistic females. This work suggests that H in BOLD can index synaptic E:I ratio and that E:I imbalance affects autistic males and females differently.
Language
  • English
Open access status
gold
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Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/153214
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