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    • It should be noted that our analyses were conducted

    2018-11-03

    It should be noted that our analyses were conducted in a between-subjects fashion. Previous work with adults has suggested that within- and between-subjects estimates of coupling reflect similar constructs (Schutter and Knyazev, 2012). However, this work also presents the possibility that coupling mechanisms develop over time, impacting observed associations between coupling and behavior. As age is an imperfect proxy for developmental stage, this suggests that there may be broad individual differences in coupling, and the within-subject link between coupling and dysregulated fear in young children. This should be kept in mind when interpreting the current results. It is also noteworthy that our findings diverge from the adult literature in ways that might be expected given the developmental stage of the participants. Namely, coupling in both high and low fear groups was not specific to frontal recording sites, as is often seen in work with adults. Rather, significant levels of coupling were seen across frontal, central, and parietal recording sites. A lack of specialization of neural processes involved in emotion processing and self-regulation to frontal fgfr inhibitor regions is frequently observed in neuroscience work with young children (e.g., Brooker and Buss, 2014; Solomon et al., 2014). Such findings are consistent with descriptions of neurodevelopment, which describe early-developing posterior regions involved in cognitive and regulatory processing being progressively overtaken by later-maturing, more anterior structures (Bachevalier and Mishkin, 1984; Goldman et al., 1971). This shift in primary processing centers is likely associated with patterns of change in neural activation during cognitive and emotional tasks from posterior to anterior areas. A final notable aspect of the current work is the strength of the longitudinal design. Given our emphasis on trait-level associations between dysregulated fear and delta–beta coupling, our efforts to eliminate state-level confounds is critical to the interpretation of the current results. While it will be important for future work to assess the relevance of possible state-related changes in coupling to early anxiety risk, our results suggest a long-term link between dysregulated fear and neural systems of regulation as indexed by delta–beta coupling. That is, we show a link between greater dysregulated fear and putative trait-level propensities for over-control that are stable across a two-year period of early childhood. Research is in progress that will establish the stability of dysregulated fear, further identifying its utility as an early marker of anxiety risk. Stable associations between dysregulated fear and neural systems of regulation provide possible targets for identifying those individuals most at risk for disorder. Similar to other domains and investigations of coupling with adults, these differences may also be used to assess the effectiveness of intervention and treatment programs for at-risk children (Lewis et al., 2008; Miskovic et al., 2011b). In addition, experimental evidence that that delta–beta coupling is associated with cortical-subcortical crosstalk is derived primarily from an animal literature (Guyton, 1976). To date, we remain limited in our understanding of the precise processes that are reflected by delta–beta coupling in humans, and in young children in particular. Therefore, although the limited behavioral work to date is consistent with a theory suggesting that delta–beta coupling is reflective of links between cortical and subcortical networks, our conclusions remain somewhat exploratory in nature. Future research that identifies the source generators of delta and beta oscillations will be critical for understanding the directionality and overall nature of the processes that are isolated using measures of delta–beta coupling.
    Author notes
    Introduction Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often fail to attend to salient behaviorally-relevant information in their environment (e.g., their name being called or a person entering a room), but oddly may appear to be distracted by subtle behaviorally-irrelevant details within their surroundings (e.g., light shining through blinds, air flowing through a duct). Various empirical accounts of attention in ASD have described individuals as both over-focused and yet easily distracted. Previous studies have shown increased distractibility and an inability to filter irrelevant information in ASD (Burack, 1994; Murphy et al., 2014), which may be due, in part, to increased perceptual capacity (Ohta et al., 2012; Remington et al., 2009, 2012). On the other hand, prior research has also demonstrated that individuals with ASD are atypically over-focused (Liss et al., 2006; Lovaas et al., 1979), which may be linked to a narrower attentional spotlight (Robertson et al., 2013; Townsend and Courchesne, 1994) and deficits in increasing the breadth of attention (Mann and Walker, 2003; Ronconi et al., 2013). The existence of these two paradoxical states in individuals with ASD – over-focused, yet susceptible to distraction – may be the result of dysfunctional modulation and interaction of attentional networks (Fan et al., 2012).