Functional alterations of the magnocellular subdivision of the visual sensory thalamus in autism

The long-standing hypothesis that autism is linked to changes in the visual magnocellular system of the human brain has never been directly examined due to technological constraints. Here, we used a recently developed 7-Tesla functional MRI (fMRI) approach to investigate this hypothesis within the visual sensory thalamus (lateral geniculate nucleus, LGN). The LGN is a crucial component of the primary visual pathway. It is particularly suited to investigate the magnocellular visual system, because within the LGN, the magnocellular (mLGN) uniquely segregates from the parvocellular (pLGN) system. Our results revealed diminished mLGN blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) responses in the autism group compared to controls. pLGN responses were comparable across groups. The mLGN alterations were observed specifically for stimuli optimized for mLGN function, i.e., visual displays with low spatial frequency and high temporal flicker frequency. The results confirm the long-standing hypothesis of magnocellular visual system alterations in autism. They substantiate the emerging perspective that sensory processing variations are part of autism symptomatology.