Atypical Scene‐Selectivity in the Retrosplenial Complex in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder

TL;DR

People with autism may have trouble with memory-based navigation due to unusual brain activity in a specific brain region.

Contribution

The study identifies atypical scene-selectivity in the retrosplenial complex in individuals with autism.

Findings

Scene-selectivity was significantly lower in the RSC of individuals with ASD compared to typically developing individuals.

The OPA did not show differences in scene-selectivity between the ASD and TD groups.

These findings suggest that RSC dysfunction may contribute to impaired memory-guided navigation in ASD.

Abstract

A small behavioral literature on individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has shown that they can be impaired when navigating using map‐based strategies (i.e., memory‐guided navigation), but not during visually‐guided navigation. Meanwhile, there is neuroimaging evidence in typically developing (TD) individuals demonstrating that the retrosplenial complex (RSC) is part of a memory‐guided navigation system, while the occipital place area (OPA) is part of a visually‐guided navigation system. A key identifying feature of the RSC and OPA is that they respond significantly more to pictures of places compared to faces or objects—i.e., they demonstrate scene‐selectivity. Therefore, we predicted that scene‐selectivity would be weaker in the RSC of individuals with ASD compared to a TD control group, while the OPA would not show such a difference between the groups. We used functional MRI to scan groups of ASD individuals and matched TD individuals while they viewed pictures of places and faces and performed a one‐back task. As predicted, scene‐selectivity was significantly lower in the RSC, but not OPA, in the ASD group compared to the TD group. These results suggest that impaired memory‐guided navigation in individuals with ASD may, in part, be due to atypical functioning in the RSC.

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