Altered EEG variability on different time scales in participants with autism spectrum disorder: an exploratory study

Autor: Lukas Hecker, Mareike Wilson, Ludger Tebartz van Elst, Jürgen Kornmeier
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Scientific Reports, Vol 12, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2045-2322
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-17304-x
Popis: Abstract One of the great challenges in psychiatry is finding reliable biomarkers that may allow for more accurate diagnosis and treatment of patients. Neural variability received increasing attention in recent years as a potential biomarker. In the present explorative study we investigated temporal variability in visually evoked EEG activity in a cohort of 16 adult participants with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and 19 neurotypical (NT) controls. Participants performed a visual oddball task using fine and coarse checkerboard stimuli. We investigated various measures of neural variability and found effects on multiple time scales. (1) As opposed to the previous studies, we found reduced inter-trial variability in the AS group compared to NT. (2) This effect builds up over the entire course of a 5-min experiment and (3) seems to be based on smaller variability of neural background activity in AS compared to NTs. The here reported variability effects come with considerably large effect sizes, making them promising candidates for potentially reliable biomarkers in psychiatric diagnostics. The observed pattern of universality across different time scales and stimulation conditions indicates trait-like effects. Further research with a new and larger set of participants are thus needed to verify or falsify our findings.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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