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Investigating language network development in autism using movie fMRI

Poster Session E - Monday, March 9, 2026, 2:30 – 4:30 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Paula Andrea Toro Vargas¹ (), Xiaoqian Chai¹; ¹McGill University

Language impairments impacting academic and social outcomes are commonly found in autistic children. Traditional fMRI language paradigms are often challenging for autistic children, limiting data quality and interpretability due to sensory and attention demands. Movie-based fMRI offers a naturalistic and engaging alternative that improves compliance and captures language processing in real-world contexts. We developed a movie-based paradigm using Despicable Me and The Present clips, labelled as 'talking' and 'no talking,' to study language network development in children aged 7 to 17. During talking scenes, combined data from the Montreal Neurological Institute and the Healthy Brain Network show robust activation of language regions, including the inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and supplementary motor area. During no-talking scenes, increased occipital and fusiform activation is shown. These findings demonstrate that the paradigm is a reliable and ecologically valid method for studying language processing in both groups. The next phase of this work applies precision mapping to quantify individual variability in network extent, lateralization, and connectivity. This approach will test whether language network organization in autism reflects atypical group-level patterns or increased inter-individual heterogeneity. By integrating behavioural measures of language and social communication, these analyses will identify whether neural variability predicts symptom profiles or functional outcomes. Preliminary 7T movie fMRI data further demonstrate the feasibility of precision mapping at higher spatial resolution. Together, this work advances an individualized and naturalistic framework for understanding heterogeneity in autism, bridging traditional group comparisons with precision neuroscience approaches capturing meaningful differences in the neural underpinnings of language.

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Development & aging