Parametric fMRI analysis of videos of variable arousal levels reveals different dorsal vs ventral activation preferences between autism and controls.

Atypical sensory processing is now considered a ubiquitous feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is responsible for the atypical sensory-based behaviours seen in these individuals. Specifically, emotional arousal is a critical ASD target since it comprises emotion regulation and sensory processing, two core aspects of autism. So, in this project, we used task-based fMRI and a well-catalogued dataset of videos with variable arousal levels to characterize the sensory processing of emotional arousal content in ASD and typically developed controls. Our analysis revealed a difference in the secondary attention network where ASD individuals showed a clear yet lateralized preference to the dorsal attention network, whereas the neurotypical individuals preferred the ventral attention network.