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Neuroimaging in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Edited by

Richard Bethlehem, PhD, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Michael Lombardo, PhD, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy

This collection is no longer accepting submissions


Molecular Autism is calling for submissions to our new Collection on Neuroimaging in Autism Spectrum Disorders.



Image credit: New Africa / stock.adobe.com

About the collection

Neuroimaging remains the only viable way to study in-vivo central nervous biology in non-invasive ways. While great progress has been made in understanding the neurobiology associated with neurodiversity, autism and broader neurodevelopmental conditions, significant challenges remain. There is enormous heterogeneity in these populations as well as in the methods used to study them. How some of this fundamental research translates to insights and how we involve the community in both the research and the translational process are all of vital importance.

The aim of this Collection is to showcase the depth and breadth of how the research community is tackling these challenges in the context of in-vivo neuroimaging of the brain in autistic individuals and broader neurodevelopmental conditions.

  1. Divergent age-related functional brain connectivity in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been observed using resting-state fMRI, although the specific findings are inconsistent across studies. Common statisti...

    Authors: Daniel Feldman, Molly Prigge, Andrew Alexander, Brandon Zielinski, Janet Lainhart and Jace King
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:24

    The Publisher Correction to this article has been published in Molecular Autism 2025 16:28

  2. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is marked by disruptions in low-level sensory processing and higher-order sociocognitive functions, suggesting a complex interplay between different brain regions across the cort...

    Authors: Jong-eun Lee, Sunghun Kim, Shinwon Park, Hyoungshin Choi, Bo-yong Park and Hyunjin Park
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:21
  3. We and others have demonstrated the resting-state (RS) peak alpha frequency (PAF) as a potential clinical marker for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with previous studies observing a higher...

    Authors: Guannan Shen, Heather L. Green, Marybeth McNamee, Rose E. Franzen, Marissa DiPiero, Jeffrey I. Berman, Matthew Ku, Luke Bloy, Song Liu, Megan Airey, Sophia Goldin, Lisa Blaskey, Emily S. Kuschner, Mina Kim, Kimberly Konka, Gregory A. Miller…
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:19
  4. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong condition that profoundly impacts health, independence, and quality of life. However, research on brain aging in autistic adults is limited, and microstructural var...

    Authors: Young Seon Shin, Danielle Christensen, Jingying Wang, Desirae J. Shirley, Ann-Marie Orlando, Regilda A. Romero, David E. Vaillancourt, Bradley J. Wilkes, Stephen A. Coombes and Zheng Wang
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:16
  5. Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental condition, the precise neurobiological underpinnings of which remain elusive. Here, we focus on group differences in resting state EEG (rsEEG). Although many previous rep...

    Authors: Adam J.O. Dede, Wenyi Xiao, Nemanja Vaci, Michael X. Cohen and Elizabeth Milne
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:13
  6. Autistic adults experience differences in social interactions involving physical contact. Brain imaging studies suggest that these differences may be related to atypical brain responses to social-affective cue...

    Authors: Haemy Lee Masson
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:11
  7. The prevalence of depression is elevated in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared to the general population, yet the reasons for this disparity remain unclear. While social deficits central ...

    Authors: Yu Hao, Sarah Banker, Jadyn Trayvick, Sarah Barkley, Arabella W. Peters, Abigaël Thinakaran, Christopher McLaughlin, Xiaosi Gu, Daniela Schiller and Jennifer Foss-Feig
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:9
  8. Brain signal variability (BSV) is an important understudied aspect of brain function linked to cognitive flexibility and adaptive behavior. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition char...

    Authors: Priyanka Sigar, Nicholas Kathrein, Elijah Gragas, Lauren Kupis, Lucina Q. Uddin and Jason S. Nomi
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:8
  9. Language difficulties are common in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by impairments in social communication as well as restricted and repetitive behaviors. Amongst i...

    Authors: Lauren Wagner, Megan Banchik, Tawny Tsang, Nana J. Okada, Rebecca Altshuler, Nicole McDonald, Susan Y. Bookheimer, Shafali S. Jeste, Shulamite Green and Mirella Dapretto
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2025 16:6
  10. Angelman syndrome (AS), a severe neurodevelopmental disorder resulting from the loss of the maternal UBE3A gene, is marked by changes in the brain’s white matter (WM). The extent of WM abnormalities seems to corr...

    Authors: Siddhi S. Ozarkar, Ridthi K.-R. Patel, Tasmai Vulli, Audrey L. Smith, Martin A. Styner, Li-Ming Hsu, Sung-Ho Lee, Yen-Yu Ian Shih, Heather C. Hazlett, Mark D. Shen, Alain C. Burette and Benjamin D. Philpot
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:54
  11. Difficulties with (non-verbal) social communication, including facial expression processing, constitute a hallmark of autism. Intranasal administration of oxytocin has been considered a potential therapeutic o...

    Authors: Matthijs Moerkerke, Nicky Daniels, Stephanie Van der Donck, Tiffany Tang, Jellina Prinsen, Elahe’ Yargholi, Jean Steyaert, Kaat Alaerts and Bart Boets
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:53
  12. Autistic-like traits (ALT) are prevalent across the general population and might be linked to some facets of a broader autism spectrum disorder (ASD) phenotype. Recent studies suggest an association of these t...

    Authors: Igor Nenadić, Yvonne Schröder, Jonas Hoffmann, Ulrika Evermann, Julia-Katharina Pfarr, Aliénor Bergmann, Daniela Michelle Hohmann, Boris Keil, Ahmad Abu-Akel, Sanna Stroth, Inge Kamp-Becker, Andreas Jansen, Sarah Grezellschak and Tina Meller
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:44
  13. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder associated with alterations in structural and functional coupling in gray matter. However, despite the detectability and modulation of brain sign...

    Authors: Peng Qing, Xiaodong Zhang, Qi Liu, Linghong Huang, Dan Xu, Jiao Le, Keith M. Kendrick, Hua Lai and Weihua Zhao
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:43
  14. Phenotypic heterogeneity in early language, intellectual, motor, and adaptive functioning (LIMA) features are amongst the most striking features that distinguish different types of autistic individuals. Yet th...

    Authors: Veronica Mandelli, Ines Severino, Lisa Eyler, Karen Pierce, Eric Courchesne and Michael V. Lombardo
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:41
  15. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition that is associated with atypical brain network organization, with prior work suggesting differential connectivity alterations with respect to fu...

    Authors: Clara F. Weber, Valeria Kebets, Oualid Benkarim, Sara Lariviere, Yezhou Wang, Alexander Ngo, Hongxiu Jiang, Xiaoqian Chai, Bo-yong Park, Michael P. Milham, Adriana Di Martino, Sofie Valk, Seok-Jun Hong and Boris C. Bernhardt
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:38
  16. Autism and schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSDs) both feature atypical social cognition. Despite evidence for comparable group-level performance in lower-level emotion processing and higher-level mentalizing...

    Authors: Lindsay D. Oliver, Iska Moxon-Emre, Colin Hawco, Erin W. Dickie, Arla Dakli, Rachael E. Lyon, Peter Szatmari, John D. Haltigan, Anna Goldenberg, Ayesha G. Rashidi, Vinh Tan, Maria T. Secara, Pushpal Desarkar, George Foussias, Robert W. Buchanan, Anil K. Malhotra…
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:37
  17. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by social communication deficits plus repetitive behaviors and restricted interests, currently affects 1/36 children in the general populat...

    Authors: Dalin Yang, Alexandra M. Svoboda, Tessa G. George, Patricia K. Mansfield, Muriah D. Wheelock, Mariel L. Schroeder, Sean M. Rafferty, Arefeh Sherafati, Kalyan Tripathy, Tracy Burns-Yocum, Elizabeth Forsen, John R. Pruett, Natasha M. Marrus, Joseph P. Culver, John N. Constantino and Adam T. Eggebrecht
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:35
  18. Previous research on autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have showed important volumetric alterations in the cerebellum and brainstem. Most of these studies are however limited to case-control studies with small c...

    Authors: Salahuddin Mohammad, Mélissa Gentreau, Manon Dubol, Gull Rukh, Jessica Mwinyi and Helgi B. Schiöth
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:34
  19. Categorization and its influence on perceptual discrimination are essential processes to organize information efficiently. Individuals with Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) are suggested to display enhanced dis...

    Authors: Jaana Van Overwalle, Birte Geusens, Stephanie Van der Donck, Bart Boets and Johan Wagemans
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:23
  20. This meta-analysis aimed to explore the most robust findings across numerous existing resting-state functional imaging and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies on the functional and structural brain alteratio...

    Authors: Zixuan Guo, Xinyue Tang, Shu Xiao, Hong Yan, Shilin Sun, Zibin Yang, Li Huang, Zhuoming Chen and Ying Wang
    Citation: Molecular Autism 2024 15:16

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original Research Articles and Reviews. 

Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Neuroimaging in Autism Spectrum Disorders" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.