A neuroimaging study of 1,009 individuals found that autistic people show increased variability in short-range functional synchronization over time alongside reduced variability in long-range synchronization, with overall synchronization strength reduced across all spatial scales. Synchronization also decayed more steeply with cortical distance in autism. When these patterns were mapped onto the sensorimotor-to-association cortical gradient, higher variability appeared in sensorimotor regions while association cortex showed lower variability.
The findings describe a consistent spatial pattern but do not establish cause. The authors propose that local hyperconnectivity may relate to synchronization dynamics that fail to propagate coherently across the cortex, producing a more rigid organization at longer distances. That inference is interpretive: it is drawn from the distance-specific pattern in the data, not from a direct manipulation or causal test.
The study used a large-sample resting-state fMRI design, which is a strength for detecting population-level differences. The evidence quality is limited because only the abstract was available for this summary; full preprocessing choices, statistical thresholds, and control analyses could not be assessed. The study is peer-reviewed and published in a indexed journal, but cross-sectional neuroimaging cannot resolve whether the synchronization pattern precedes, follows from, or simply co-occurs with autism-related traits.
The question of how hierarchical cortical organization and long-range coherence relate to unified conscious experience is active in consciousness research. A pattern in which local synchronization is more variable while long-range coupling is both weaker and less variable over time is directly relevant to theories that treat large-scale coherence as a substrate for integrated experience, though the present data neither confirm nor rule out any specific account of that relationship.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bpsgos.2026.100787