Fig. 5.

Functional connectivity in ASD vs. TD underlying detail-oriented perception during visual crowding. Phase locking values (PLV) were estimated for the 24 sub-ROIs identified/selected through the source reconstruction (Fig. 4 and Table 2). Based on the time–frequency results, the connectivity analysis was conducted in the beta range (15–30 Hz). The connectivity matrix reports for each pair of seeds the value and direction of the statistical difference in connectivity between ASD and TD groups under a crowding regime. As assessed with “regional” cluster-corrected permutation tests, subjects with ASD showed an increased beta connectivity between the right occipital cortex and the left anterior-temporal lobe (p = .004; dashed line). The boundaries between hemispheres and anatomical regions (from left to right: orbitofrontal, prefrontal, temporal and occipital) are denoted by a solid line and different colour shades.