Fig. 2
Stepwise functional connectivity (SFC) analysis. SFC analysis combining three sensory seeds simultaneously (V1, A1, S1) mapped the human multimodal integration network in controls (left) and ASD (right). The number of connectivity steps increases moving up in the plot. In controls, transmodal DMN regions became selectively activated, after around 100–120 steps. In ASD, despite rapid initial activation of a rather extended territory, a selective DMN core activation did not occur in a comparable step range as in controls. The middle panel shows SFC findings stratified across four hierarchy levels, adapted from Mesulam8 and Margulies et al.17. The bar represents a mean ± 1 SD of required connectivity steps. Statistical comparisons between groups using Student’s t-tests across these four levels emphasize faster SFC to sensory, dorsal attention, and salience networks in ASD compared to controls, but delayed SFC to the DMN
