Abstract
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterised by impairment in joint attention (JA), which has two components: the response to JA and the initiation of JA. Literature suggests a correlation between JA and neural circuitries, although this link is still largely unexplored in ASD. In this pilot study, we aimed at investigating the neural correlates of responding and initiating JA in high-functioning children with ASD and evaluating the changes in brain function and visual pattern after six months of rehabilitative treatment using an integrated EEG/eye-tracking system. Our results showed that initiating and responding JA subtend both overlapping (i.e. frontal and temporal) and specialized (i.e. parietal for responding JA and occipital for initiating JA) neural circuitries. In addition, in a subgroup of subjects, we observed trends of changes in both brain activity and connectivity after rehabilitative treatment in both the two tasks, which were correlated with modifications in gaze measures. These preliminary results, if confirmed in a larger sample, suggest the feasibility of using the proposed multimodal approach to characterise JA-related brain circuitries and visual pattern in ASD individuals and to monitor longitudinal changes in response to rehabilitative intervention.
Highlights
Joint attention (JA) is described as the ability to coordinate visual attention with another person and shift the gaze toward a shared object or event[1]
We found no differences in the Responding to JA (RJA) task between the two groups, whereas different gaze patterns emerged in the initiating JA (IJA) tasks
Neural correlates of RJA and IJA tasks at T0
Summary
Joint attention (JA) is described as the ability to coordinate visual attention with another person and shift the gaze toward a shared object or event[1]. Responding to JA (RJA) was described as the ability to shift visual attention following other’s social cues such as gaze or pointing; initiating JA (IJA) was reported as the ability to seek other’s attention using one’s own direction of gaze or gestures with the aim of sharing an experience. The ASD group showed a weaker first fixation preference for the attended object compared to TD, suggesting an initial processing bias for attended objects in ASD individuals[18] These contradictory results could be ascribed to the different nature of the stimuli used in the tasks (images or videos), and/or to the different social cues (gaze shift, pointing, head movement), and/or, most importantly, to the focus of most studies on the responding component of JA that could be likely only partially impaired in ASD. We have hypothesised that these differences were due to ASD-related impairments in visual disengagement from faces, in global scanning of the scene, and in the ability to anticipate object’s action
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