Czekóová, Kristína, Mareček, Radek, Staněk, Rostislav, Hartley, Calum, Kessler, Klaus, Hlavatá, Pavlína, Ošlejšková, Hana, Brázdil, Milan and Shaw, Daniel Joel (2025). Altered Patterns of Dynamic Functional Connectivity Underpin Reduced Expressions of Social–Emotional Reciprocity in Autistic Adults. Autism Research ,
Abstract
To identify the neurocognitive mechanisms underpinning the social difficulties that characterize autism, we performed functional magnetic resonance imaging on pairs of autistic and non‐autistic adults simultaneously whilst they interacted with one another on the iterated Ultimatum Game (iUG)—an interactive task that emulates the reciprocal characteristic of naturalistic interpersonal exchanges. Two age‐matched sets of male–male dyads were investigated: 16 comprised an autistic Responder and a non‐autistic Proposer, and 19 comprised non‐autistic pairs of Responder and Proposer. Players' round‐by‐round behavior on the iUG was modeled as reciprocal choices, and dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) was measured to identify the neural mechanisms underpinning reciprocal behaviors. Behavioral expressions of reciprocity were significantly reduced in autistic compared with non‐autistic Responders, yet no such differences were observed between the non‐autistic Proposers in either set of dyads. Furthermore, we identified latent dFC states with temporal properties associated with reciprocity. Autistic interactants spent less time in brain states characterized by dynamic inter‐network integration and segregation among the Default Mode Network and cognitive control networks, suggesting that their reduced expressions of social–emotional reciprocity reflect less efficient reconfigurations among brain networks supporting flexible cognition and behavior. These findings advance our mechanistic understanding of the social difficulties characterizing autism.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.70010 |
---|---|
Divisions: | College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Psychology College of Health & Life Sciences Aston University (General) |
Funding Information: | We acknowledge the core facility MAFIL supported by the Czech-BioImaging large RI project (LM2023050 funded by MEYS CR), part of Euro-BioImaging (www.eurobioimaging.eu) ALM and the Medical Imaging Node (Brno, CZ), for their support with obtaining scientif |
Additional Information: | Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | dynamic functional connectivity,social interaction,autism,reciprocity |
Publication ISSN: | 1939-3806 |
Last Modified: | 31 Mar 2025 17:21 |
Date Deposited: | 26 Feb 2025 09:17 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://onlinel ... .1002/aur.70010
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2025-02-24 |
Published Online Date: | 2025-02-24 |
Accepted Date: | 2025-02-12 |
Authors: |
Czekóová, Kristína
Mareček, Radek Staněk, Rostislav Hartley, Calum Kessler, Klaus Hlavatá, Pavlína Ošlejšková, Hana Brázdil, Milan Shaw, Daniel Joel ( ![]() |