Hemispheric differences in language processing in autism spectrum disorders: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies.
Autistic brains swap to the right side when language falters and pull in visual areas when it works.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team pooled 25 brain-imaging studies of people with autism doing language tasks.
They mapped which side of the brain lit up and linked it to how well each person did.
What they found
When accuracy dropped, the right side took over the classic left-side language spots.
Good scores came with extra activity in the visual area, not the usual language hubs.
How this fits with other research
Hua et al. (2024) saw the same weak left-side signals, but only in kids hearing stories.
Wong et al. (2019) also found visual-area help during word tasks, matching the intact-performance pattern.
Haring et al. (1988) first showed poor language tied to bigger right-side brain waves, echoing the right-hemisphere shift seen here.
Why it matters
Check which hemisphere your client leans on during verbal tasks. If they struggle, add visual cues and slow the pace to ease the load on the overworked right side.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Language impairments, a hallmark feature of autism spectrum disorders (ASD), have been related to neuroanatomical and functional abnormalities. Abnormal lateralization of the functional language network, increased reliance on visual processing areas, and increased posterior brain activation have all been reported in ASD and proposed as explanatory models of language difficulties. Nevertheless, inconsistent findings across studies have prevented a comprehensive characterization of the functional language network in ASD. The aim of this study was to quantify common and consistent patterns of brain activation during language processing in ASD and typically developing control (TD) participants using a meta-analytic approach. Activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis was used to examine 22 previously published functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)/positron emission tomography studies of language processing (ASD: N = 328; TD: N = 324). Tasks included in this study addressed semantic processing, sentence comprehension, processing figurative language, and speech production. Within-group analysis showed largely overlapping patterns of language-related activation in ASD and TD groups. However, the ASD participants, relative to TD participants, showed: (1) more right hemisphere activity in core language areas (i.e., superior temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus), particularly in tasks where they had poorer performance accuracy; (2) bilateral MTG hypo-activation across many different paradigms; and (3) increased activation of the left lingual gyrus in tasks where they had intact performance. These findings show that the hypotheses reviewed here address the neural and cognitive aspects of language difficulties in ASD across all tasks only in a limited way. Instead, our findings suggest the nuances of language and brain in ASD in terms of its context-dependency. Autism Res 2016, 9: 1046-1057. © 2016 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2016 · doi:10.1002/aur.1599