The alerting by flanker conflict effect was associated with greater activation in the right superior frontal gyrus (Fig. 3G); the orienting by flanker conflict effect was associated with greater activation in the IPS (Fig. 3H), mid-occipital gyrus, and cerebellar vermis; the validity by flanker conflict effect was associated with greater ACC activation (Fig. 3I). Further analysis of conflict processing and the executive control #Proteasome inhibitor keyword# network We hypothesized that executive control network abnormality in ASD was associated with deficits in the three domains of ASD. Therefore, we

further examined patterns of group differences in conflict processing. Regions of the frontoparietal control network and the anterior insular cortex were activated in both groups (Fig. 4A and B, Tables 3 and ​and4).4). HC had greater activation than ASD only in the ACC (as in Fig. 3F and Table 2), with no significant activation in the ACC for conflict processing Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in the ASD group. There was also no cluster showing significantly greater activation for the contrast of ASD minus HC. In addition, the ACC cluster of group differences extended to the posterior cingulate Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical cortex, which was due to greater deactivation in the ASD group. We also examined the possibility of a group (ASD, HC) by flanker congruency (congruent, incongruent)

interaction by extracting perimeter estimates (β value) from the ACC. The HC group showed less deactivation for the incongruent condition than the congruent condition, resulting in a positive conflict effect. However, the ASD group showed greater activation for the congruent compared with the incongruent conditions, resulting in a negative (or lack of) conflict effect. Figure 4 Brain activation Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical associated with flanker conflict effect in healthy controls (HC) (A) and individuals with autism spectrum disorders

(ASD) (B) during the attention network test. The color was scaled from t >2.51 to 5 for individual group maps. … Table Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 3 Conflict-related activation in healthy controls Table 4 Conflict-related activation in individuals with ASD Analysis of variance for the behavioral data was conducted with group (HC, ASD) as a between-subject L-NAME HCl factor and congruence (congruent, incongruent) as a within-subject factor. There was a significant main effect of conflict on error rate (F(1, 22) = 29.63, P < 0.01); error rate under the incongruent condition was significantly higher than under the congruent condition. There was also a significant group difference on overall error rate (F(1, 22) = 10.49, P < 0.01). In addition, the conflict by group interaction was significant (F(1, 22) = 7.62, P = 0.01); the conflict effect was significantly greater in the ASD group than in the HC group. For RT, although the main conflict effect was significant (F(1, 22) = 121.88, P < 0.01), the group difference was not significant (F < 1) and the conflict by group interaction was not significant (F < 1) (see Fig.