On the other hand, 30% of the 33 factors utilized in the current report represented increased ASD-coherence. The current study again is not the first to report evidence for increased coherence in concert with reduced coherence [22,27,28] with some studies reporting primarily increased coherence [21,26]. It is more difficult to interpret increased connectivity in the context of ASD-subjects. Increased connectivity, as seen in this study, is primarily represented by long inter-electrode distance factors. This might represent a failure of developmentally appropriate pruning or die-back and, thereby, constitute a further functional liability. Failure of expected die-back of certain cortical-cortical connections with the attendant, aberrant over-connectivity might interfere with normal cortical processing. An alternative possibility is that the increased coherence may constitute a compensatory attempt of the autistic brain to form atypical, spatially disparate, cortical networks in an attempt to replace function normally subserved by assumed-to-be deficient more localized networks. Additionally, the presence of increased coherence might relate to the known association between autism and epilepsy [78].
