Abstract
The autism diagnosis requires deficits in social interaction and communication, yet neither occurs in isolation. This brief literature-based analysis provides evidence that other factors are involved in autistic people's atypical social communication. The brain is a complicated system where regions serve multiple, general, and overlapping roles. Sensorimotor and broad cognitive processes underlie both neurotypicals' and autistics' social cognition and behavior. Sensory strengths sometimes underlie autistic people's difficulties, especially in dynamic contexts that require multimodal integration. Social abilities and behaviors occur between people in social contexts, and autistic and neurotypical people share mutual difficulties in understanding one another. This paper challenges attempts to reduce autism to social deficits, and suggests the need for better interpersonal and societal understanding of and support for autistic people.
Highlights
The autism diagnosis requires deficits in social interaction and communication, yet neither occurs in isolation
As people learn and make sense of things, different parts of the brain are well-connected and function in sync and rhythm with one another, with activity oscillating back and forth (Wang, 2010; Uhlhass and Singer, 2012). Such wiring contributes to the rhythm and synchrony of typical social interaction, but these processes happen atypically in autistic people
The cerebellum (Fatemi et al, 2012), basal ganglia (Qiu et al, 2010; Prat and Stocco, 2012), and sensorimotor cortex (Hamilton, 2013) brain structures known to assist motor control connect to other regions and appear to play important roles in timing, speech production (Bouchard et al, 2013), the back-and-forth conversation (Scott et al, 2009) that is often problematic for autistic people
Summary
The autism diagnosis requires deficits in social interaction and communication, yet neither occurs in isolation. INTEGRATIVE NEUROSCIENCE Increasing evidence supports how brain networks integrate complex information, including the contribution of sensorimotor areas to abilities and behaviors considered social in autistic and neurotypical people.
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