Functional Brain Connectivity Analysis in Intellectual Developmental Disorder During Music Perception.
Intellectual Developmental Disorder (IDD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder involving impairment of general cognitive abilities. This disorder impacts the conceptual, social, and practical skills adversely. There is a growing interest in exploring the neurological behavior associated with these disorders. Assessment of functional brain connectivity and graph theory measures have emerged as powerful tools to aid these research goals. The current research contributes by comparing brain connectivity patterns of IDD individuals to those typical controls. Considering the intellectual deficits linked to the IDD population, we hypothesized an atypical connectivity pattern in the IDD group. Brain signals were recorded by a dry-electrode Electroencephalography (EEG) system during the rest and music states observed by the subjects. We studied a group of seven IDD subjects and seven healthy controls to understand the connectivity within the human brain during the resting-state vis-à-vis while listening to music. Findings of this research emphasize (1) hyper-connected functional brain networks and increased modularity as potential characteristics of the IDD group, (2) the ability of soothing music to reduce the resting state hyper-connected pattern in the IDD group, and (3) the effect of soothing music in the lower frequency bands of the control group compared to the higher frequency bands of the IDD group.