  Autism spectrum disorder is a neuro-developmental disorder characterized by
abnormalities of neural synchronization. In this study, functional near
infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is used to study the difference in functional
connectivity in left and right inferior frontal cortices (IFC) and temporal
cortices (TC) between autistic and typically developing children between 8-11
years of age. 10 autistic children and 10 typical ones were recruited in our
study for 8-min resting state measurement. Results show that the overall
interhemispheric correlation of HbO was significantly lower in autistic
children than in the controls. In particular, reduced connectivity was found to
be most significant in TC area of autism. Autistic children lose the symmetry
in the patterns of correlation maps. These results suggest the feasibility of
using the fNIRS method to assess abnormal functional connectivity of the
autistic brain and its potential application in autism diagnosis.
