Electrophysiological evidence of atypical visual change detection in adults with autism

H Cléry,F Bonnet-Brilhault,M Gomot,E Houy-Durand,S Roux,N Bruneau

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00062

Abstract

Although atypical change detection processes have been highlighted in the auditory modality in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), little is known about these processes in the visual modality. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate visual change detection in adults with ASD, taking into account the salience of change, in order to determine whether this ability is affected in this disorder. Thirteen adults with ASD and 13 controls were presented with a passive visual three stimuli oddball paradigm. The findings revealed atypical visual change processing in ASD. Whereas controls displayed a vMMN in response to deviant and a novelty P3 in response to novel stimuli, patients with ASD displayed a novelty P3 in response to both deviant and novel stimuli. These results thus suggested atypical orientation of attention toward unattended minor changes in ASD that might contribute to the intolerance of change.

Highlights

Increased attention has been paid in the past 10 years to the study of the event related potential (ERP) evoked by automatic change detection in the visual modality: the visual mismatch negativity
It is highly relevant to focus on automatic change detection in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in the light of clinical evidence in individuals with ASD that they react in an unusual way to unattended events that occur in their environment or that prevent their routines
A negative component peaked at a latency of 170 ms and was followed by a more central positive wave culminating around 240 ms (P2) (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Increased attention has been paid in the past 10 years to the study of the event related potential (ERP) evoked by automatic change detection in the visual modality: the visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) This electrophysiological component has been extensively described in healthy adults as a negative component culminating over occipital sites between 150 and 350 ms in response to various deviant stimuli such as direction of movement (Kremlacek et al, 2006), form (Besle et al, 2005), orientation (Astikainen et al, 2008), spatial frequency (Maekawa et al, 2005), and color (Czigler et al, 2004). These features indicate that intolerance of change in ASD may be rooted in basic abnormalities in the processing of sensory information, and especially in the automatic processing of changing stimuli (Gomot and Wicker, 2012)

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