title: Variability of cortical oscillation patterns: A possible endophenotype in autism spectrum disorders?
abstract: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been associated with altered neural oscillations, especially fast oscillatory activity in the gamma frequency range, suggesting fundamentally disturbed temporal coordination of activity during information processing. A detailed review of available cortical oscillation studies in ASD does not convey a clear-cut picture with respect to dysfunctional oscillation patterns in the gamma or other frequency ranges. Recent evidence suggests that instead of a general failure to activate or synchronize the cortex, there is greater intra-participant variability across behavioral, fMRI and EEG responses in ASD. Intra-individual fluctuations from one trial to another have been largely ignored in task-related neural oscillation studies of ASD, which instead have focused on mean changes in power. We highlight new avenues for the analysis of cortical oscillation patterns in ASD which are sensitive to trial-to-trial variability within the participant, in order to validate the significance of increased response variability as possible endophenotype of the disorder.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany. Electronic address: ndavid@uke.de.
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: David
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Till R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Schneider
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Ina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Peiker
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, 309 Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2, UK.
authors.forename: Reem
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Al-Jawahiri
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, 20246, Hamburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Engel
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, 309 Western Bank, Sheffield, S10 2, UK. Electronic address: E.Milne@sheffield.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Elizabeth
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Milne
mesh_terms: D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder; D058068:Endophenotypes; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging
keywords: Autism spectrum disorder; EEG; Inter-trial phase coherence; Intra-individual variability; MEG; Neural noise; Neuronal oscillations