Abstract
Functional, structural, and cytoarchitectural differences in the cerebellum are consistently reported in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Despite this, the mechanisms governing cerebellar contributions to ASD, particularly within the sociocognitive domain, are not well understood. Recently, it has been suggested that several core features of ASD may be associated with challenges creating and using prior expectations or predictions to rapidly adapt to changing stimuli or situations, also known as adaptive prediction. Importantly, neuroimaging, clinical, and animal work find that the cerebellum supports adaptive prediction in both motor and non-motor domains. Perturbations to the cerebellum via injury or neuromodulation have been associated with impairments in predictive skills. Here, we review evidence for a cerebellar role in social cognition and adaptive prediction across individuals with and without ASD.
Highlights
Differences in social cognition, including interpreting socio-communicative intent from gestures and adapting behaviors to different social contexts are characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD; American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
Adaptive prediction frameworks have been useful in organizing our understanding of social cognition in ASD and developing hypotheses for future research
The cerebellum, a structure known for its role in adaptive prediction, is often excluded from empirical neuroimaging studies and theoretical discussions of neural substrates of social cognition in ASD
Summary
Differences in social cognition, including interpreting socio-communicative intent from gestures and adapting behaviors to different social contexts are characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Contributes to adaptive prediction in social cognition, which requires us to interpret the actions of others, anticipate what they might say and when they might say it, and infer mental states from their actions and words (Koster-Hale and Saxe, 2013; Stoodley and Tsai, 2021). Postmortem studies in autistic individuals find that Purkinje cell reductions are greatest in Crus I/II (Fatemi et al, 2002; Skefos et al, 2014), and modulation of these regions in animal models of ASD can both cause and rescue social challenges as well as other behaviors characteristic of ASD (Tsai et al, 2012; Stoodley et al, 2017; Badura et al, 2018).
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