Brief report: brain activation to social words in a sedated child with autism.
A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study was performed on a 4-year-old girl with autism. While sedated, she listened to three utterances (numbers, hello, her own first name) played through headphones. Based on analyses of the fMRI data, the amount of total brain activation varied with the content of the utterance. The greatest volume of overall activation was in response to numbers, followed by the word 'hello', with the least activation to her name. Frontal cortex activation was greatest in response to her name, with less activation for numbers, and the least for the word 'hello.' These findings indicate that fMRI can identify and quantify the brain regions that are activated in response to words in children with autism under sedation.
Carmody
Dennis P
DP
Institute for the Study of Child Development, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, 97 Paterson Street, New Brunswick, NJ, 08903-0019, USA. carmoddp@umdnj.edu
Moreno
Rosanne
R
Mars
Audrey E
AE
Seshadri
Kapila
K
Lambert
George H
GH
Lewis
Michael
M
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D006993:Hypnotics and Sedatives / Q000494:pharmacology*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D012660:Semantics; D012919:Social Behavior; D014825:Vocabulary
D006993:Hypnotics and Sedatives