Gradients of cortical hierarchy in Autism

Abstract

Autism is a developmental condition associated with altered functional connectivity. We propose to re-frame the functional connectivity alterations in terms of gradients that capture the functional hierarchy of cortical processing from sensory to default-mode network regions. We hypothesized that this hierarchy will be altered in ASD. To test that, we compared the scale of gradients in people with autism and healthy controls. The present results do not support our hypothesis. There are two alternative implications: either the processing hierarchies are preserved in autism or the scale of the gradients does not capture them. In the future we will attempt to settle which alternative is more likely.