Action-based touch simulation in high functioning autism: Can compromised self-other distinction abilities link social and sensory problems in the autism spectrum?

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Action-based touch simulation in high functioning autism: Can compromised self-other distinction abilities link social and sensory problems in the autism spectrum? Eliane Deschrijver1*, Jan R. Wiersema1 and Marcel Brass1 1 Ghent University, Belgium In the current EEG-study, we investigated whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) effectively use their own sense of touch to understand tactile experiences that accompany other people’s actions (action-based touch). We tested the action-based somatosensory congruency paradigm (Deschrijver, Wiersema, & Brass, submitted) in a group of adults with high-functioning autism (HFA) and a group with matched controls. In this paradigm, participants observe a finger tap movement of a human or wooden hand, combined with a tactile sensation that is spatially either congruent or incongruent to the tactile consequence of the observed movement. We predicted that individuals with HFA would show altered neuronal processing in response to the congruency of observed action-based human touch at early stages of own somatosensory processing (in the P50, N100 and N140 SEPs) and at later stages of higher-order cognitive self-related processing (P3). First, the data yielded evidence for altered somatosensory processing in the P50 and the N100 (but not in the N140). Second, while the control group showed a congruency effect for human hand trials only in the P3, this effect diminished in the HFA group and reliably correlated with social symptomatology and sensory hypersensitivity/avoidance scales. This suggests that individuals with HFA do not signal to the same extent when simulated action-based touch does not match own touch. We argue that compromised self-other distinction abilities centered on somatosensory processing might denote a crucial theoretical link between sensory and social impairments in the autism spectrum. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), Somatosensory Evoked Potentials (SEP), P3, Touch Perception, self-other distinction, mirror neuron system Conference: 11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience, Mons, Belgium, 22 May - 22 May, 2015. Presentation Type: Oral or Poster presentation Topic: Neuroscience Citation: Deschrijver E, Wiersema JR and Brass M (2015). Action-based touch simulation in high functioning autism: Can compromised self-other distinction abilities link social and sensory problems in the autism spectrum?. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 11th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2015.89.00083 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 04 May 2015; Published Online: 05 May 2015. * Correspondence: Miss. Eliane Deschrijver, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium, eliane.deschrijver@ugent.be Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Eliane Deschrijver Jan R Wiersema Marcel Brass Google Eliane Deschrijver Jan R Wiersema Marcel Brass Google Scholar Eliane Deschrijver Jan R Wiersema Marcel Brass PubMed Eliane Deschrijver Jan R Wiersema Marcel Brass Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.