Late attentional processes potentially compensate for early perceptual multisensory integration deficits in children with autism: evidence from evoked potentials

Maria Elena Stefanou,Patricia E G Bestelmeyer,Neil M Dundon,Nikolaos Smyrnis,Christoph Klein,Chara Ioannou,Monica Biscaldi,Stephan Bender

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-73022-2

Abstract

Sensory processing deficits and altered long-range connectivity putatively underlie Multisensory Integration (MSI) deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The present study set out to investigate non-social MSI stimuli and their electrophysiological correlates in young neurotypical adolescents and adolescents with ASD. We report robust MSI effects at behavioural and electrophysiological levels. Both groups demonstrated normal behavioural MSI. However, at the neurophysiological level, the ASD group showed less MSI-related reduction of the visual P100 latency, greater MSI-related slowing of the auditory P200 and an overall temporally delayed and spatially constrained onset of MSI. Given the task design and patient sample, and the age of our participants, we argue that electro-cortical indices of MSI deficits in ASD: (a) can be detected in early-adolescent ASD, (b) occur at early stages of perceptual processing, (c) can possibly be compensated by later attentional processes, (d) thus leading to normal MSI at the behavioural level.

Highlights

Sensory processing deficits and altered long-range connectivity putatively underlie Multisensory Integration (MSI) deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
We aimed to investigate the electrophysiological correlates of multisensory integration (MSI) and its spatio-temporal evolution in autistic individuals between the ages of 11 and 14 years old, and without Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) comorbidity, using a modified version of previously employed MSI paradigm to assay the modulatory role of attention
The bimodal condition produced overall faster and less variable reaction times (RTs), in addition to increased accuracy compared to both unimodal conditions; bimodal stimuli led to robust Redundancy Gain (RG) and significant MSI as defined by Miller’s Race Model Inequality (RMI)

Summary

Introduction

Sensory processing deficits and altered long-range connectivity putatively underlie Multisensory Integration (MSI) deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Increased self-rated sensory responsivity correlates positively with autistic traits in both autistic and neurotypical a dults[5] Another implication of the sensory symptoms characteristic to autism are deficits in multisensory integration (MSI). Autistic individuals are impaired in a variety of MSI tasks, including the pip-and-pop visual search task, audio-visual gap/overlap tasks, simple reaction time paradigms, and two-choice discrimination tasks employing emotions[8,18,19] Relative to controls, they benefit less from bimodal stimuli in terms of a ccuracy[8] and reaction times (RTs)[8,18,19], and show decreased sensitivity to multisensory illusions, probably indicating diminished MSI9,10. Sensory and multisensory deficits could potentially lead to the social skills deficits seen in ASD, a fact supported by findings of a relation between audio-visual integration skills and deficits in communication and social skills[21,22]

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Methods

Conclusion