autism subtypes

[mellowtigger]

I've mentioned once or twice what I recognize as an autism subtype, the talkative versus the quiet groups. Some of us are compelled to try being social, particularly via vocalization, and some of us aren't. I find the skill level of such socialization (which is used in diagnostic criteria) less interesting a topic or grouping than the initial compulsion to socialize. Some have it, and some don't. I'm in the "don't" camp, perfectly capable of vocalizing but trending toward not. My monkeysphere is quite small, and I almost never feel an urge to expand it.

I've seen before where researchers tried their own efforts at subtyping. One study found 3 groups, but it wasn't particularly helpful because they "purposely made this data have three subtypes in each group by differentiating their global means". Sure, they found some behavioral distinctions from their almost-arbitrary groupings, but that's not the sort of subtyping that I'm hoping for.

Does anyone have access to this study and could summarize the 4 types that they identified? They're using objective means to identify biological distinctions, which is exactly what I'm hoping for. Even this summary doesn't explain what they found. :(

Comments

[foeclan]

I don't seem to have access to 'new' articles in Nature Neuroscience, I'm afraid.

[mellowtigger]

Thanks for checking. I figure that a reporter somewhere will eventually summarize it well. I'm just being impatient. :)

[rebeccmeister]

You'd have to remind me in a year. The most recent year is paywalled for my institution.

From the summary you found, it looks to me like they took brain imaging data and then figured out a way to categorize regional connectivity patterns on three axes. The three axes may be somewhat arbitrary to those of us who aren't already deep into neuroscience. That allowed them to identify the four clusters of connectivity patterns, that apparently map to these three aspects of autism, as measured using maybe more standard assessment tools? Basically from this part:

"three roughly orthogonal brain-connectivity scores that did the best job of predicting the mix of someone’s verbal intelligence, social affect and repetitive behaviors."

It does look useful that they were able to then connect the identified groups to specific biomarkers, hinting at specific and distinct molecular bases to the different identified subtypes.

I don't know how any of that relates to the compulsion to socialize, though.

[mellowtigger]

Hmmm, I think you're right. That description doesn't seem related to any desire for socialization. If I don't see any more details in the next year, maybe I'll remember to revisit this topic after the 1-year barrier has passed. :) I do still want to understand what it is that they noticed.

[geowench]

email the lead author. academics are usually thrilled someone wants to read their article and will send along a pdf.

[kathmandu]

This looks like a secondary-press article that might be useful, if you haven't already seen it?
https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/brain-connectivity-behavior-flag-four-autism-subtypes/

[mellowtigger]

Thanks for adding. Yes, I've seen that one but didn't much like the (lack of) detail there. This one crossed my feeds a day or two ago, and it goes into much more detail about the 4 groups.

"Those advances allowed the team to identify four clinically distinct groups of people with autism. Two of the groups had above-average verbal intelligence. One group also had severe deficits in social communication but less repetitive behaviors, while the other had more repetitive behaviors and less social impairment. The connections between the parts of the brain that process visual information and help the brain identify the most salient incoming information were hyperactive in the subgroup with more social impairment. These same connections were weak in the group with more repetitive behaviors... The other two groups had severe social impairments and repetitive behaviors but had verbal abilities at the opposite ends of the spectrum. Despite some behavioral similarities, the investigators discovered completely distinct brain connection patterns in these two subgroups.
https://neurosciencenews.com/asd-subtypes-machine-learning-22968/

They go on to talk about the possibility of pairing specific therapies with specific subtypes. They mention oxytocin in particular being associated with only some of the 4 groups, meaning it might be helpful for some but irrelevant to others.