Social Attention in Autism: Neural Sensitivity to Speech Over Background Noise Predicts Encoding of Social Information.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by lack of attention to social cues in the environment, including speech. Hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli, such as loud noises, is also extremely common in youth with ASD. While a link between sensory hypersensitivity and impaired social functioning has been hypothesized, very little is known about the neural mechanisms whereby exposure to distracting sensory stimuli may interfere with the ability to direct attention to socially-relevant information.

Imaging-genetics of sex differences in ASD: distinct effects of OXTR variants on brain connectivity.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is more prevalent in males than in females, but the neurobiological mechanisms that give rise to this sex-bias are poorly understood. The female protective hypothesis suggests that the manifestation of ASD in females requires higher cumulative genetic and environmental risk relative to males. Here, we test this hypothesis by assessing the additive impact of several ASD-associated OXTR variants on reward network resting-state functional connectivity in males and females with and without ASD, and explore how genotype, sex, and diagnosis relate to heterogeneity in neuroendophenotypes.