Poster Presentation

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Precision fMRI of the receptive language network and language abilities in autistic and non-autistic children

Poster Session E, Friday, October 2, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm, Wangari Maathai
This poster is part of the Sandbox Series.

Talia Liu¹, Arianna Aguilar¹, Juliana Ronderos², Tyler Perrachione¹, Jennifer Zuk¹; ¹Boston University, ²Teachers College, Columbia University

Approximately two-thirds of autistic individuals experience difficulties with language processing and production (Levy et al., 2010), often affecting long-term academic, vocational, and social outcomes. Substantial variability in language abilities among autistic children is well established, but it remains unclear why some children experience persistent language difficulties while others do not. Prior functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies suggest that language networks in autism may be characterized by reduced activation in left-lateralized frontal and temporal regions canonically associated with language, increased activation in right-hemispheric regions (Herringshaw et al., 2016; Jouravlev et al., 2020), and decreased functional connectivity within and between hemispheres (Larson et al., 2025). Meta-analyses have specifically found increased activation of right frontal regions during language processing, including the right inferior frontal gyrus (RIFG) (Herringshaw et al., 2016). However, the functional significance of this right-hemispheric recruitment remains poorly understood, especially in school-aged children, and few studies have directly linked neural activation patterns to behavioral language skills. Furthermore, existing fMRI findings are inconsistent in part due to traditional group-averaging analytic approaches, which result in a loss of precision in identifying individuals’ functional networks. Precision fMRI is a powerful approach that allows for the characterization of individual participants’ functional brain activation, but this approach has not been used with a sample of autistic children. In the present study, we use a functional language localizer task to investigate the neural bases of high-level language processing in autistic children. Specifically, we aim to test if functional activation during language processing differs between autistic and non-autistic children and how it relates to behaviorally-measured language skills. To date, 26 children (15 autistic, 11 non-autistic) have completed all study procedures including MRI. Study recruitment is ongoing with a goal of enrolling 20 autistic and 20 non-autistic participants total. Children completed a validated, child-friendly language localizer fMRI task that identifies regions in individual brains responsible for receptive language processing by contrasting listening to and watching videos of forward (comprehensible) and backward (incomprehensible) speech (Olson et al., 2023). Children were administered the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF-5) to characterize their overall language skills and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition to confirm autism diagnostic status. Data processing is ongoing; preliminary results will be presented at the conference. Using a precision fMRI approach, we measure children’s receptive language selectivity within subject-specific functional regions of interest (fROIs) defined within group-constrained parcels for left-hemispheric language regions and their right-hemispheric homologues. We hypothesize that autistic children will show reduced left-hemispheric activation and greater right-hemispheric recruitment, particularly in RIFG, during receptive language processing. Next, we will examine how language task-dependent functional activation relates to standardized language measures. We hypothesize that in autistic children, right-hemispheric frontal activation, particularly in RIFG, will be positively associated with individual differences in behaviorally measured overall language skills, reflecting a compensatory neural mechanism for language processing. Together, these analyses will investigate neurobiological mechanisms underlying language heterogeneity in autism, which in the long-term will help inform individualized and targeted interventions for autistic children.

Topic Areas: Disorders: Developmental, Language Development/Acquisition