The neural correlates of atypical episodic memory processes in autism spectrum disorder: what role does the semantic system play?

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event The neural correlates of atypical episodic memory processes in autism spectrum disorder: what role does the semantic system play? Sebastian B. Gaigg1*, Esha Massand1 and Dermot M. Bowler1 1 City University London, United Kingdom It is now well established that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are characterised by a unique cognitive profile that includes a pattern of strengths and weaknesses in the domain of memory. Specifically, individuals with ASD are found to experience disproportionate difficulties on tests of free recall compared to cued-recall or recognition, which is particularly apparent when conceptual relations amongst to-be-remembered stimuli can be used to facilitate performance or when memory is assessed over multiple trials. A considerable amount of evidence suggests that this pattern is the result of impairments in episodic memory and associated flexible relational processing, whilst semantic memory and item specific processes are spared (see Bowler & Gaigg, 2008; Bowler et al., 2011 for reviews). Although this pattern implies the hippocampus and frontal lobe regions in the memory difficulties experienced by individuals with ASD, no studies have to date directly examined the neural correlates of atypical memory functioning in this disorder. Here we summarise the observations of recent ERP and fMRI studies that seem to pose a challenge to the notion of specific episodic memory difficulties in ASD. Using a series of experiments employing the ‘Remember/Know’ recognition procedure, we show that, paradoxically, individuals with ASD seem to engage areas associated with episodic processes more than comparison participants during encoding, whilst at retrieval, atypicalities are evident primarily in the neural events associated with the semantic memory system. To reconcile these findings we speculate that inefficient encoding of episodic details in ASD leads to an unusual reliance on the semantic memory system during retrieval. Keywords: autism, memory and learning Conference: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI), Palma, Mallorca, Spain, 25 Sep - 29 Sep, 2011. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Poster Sessions: Neural Bases of Memory and Learning Citation: Gaigg SB, Massand E and Bowler DM (2011). The neural correlates of atypical episodic memory processes in autism spectrum disorder: what role does the semantic system play?. Conference Abstract: XI International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON XI). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2011.207.00206 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 21 Nov 2011; Published Online: 28 Nov 2011. * Correspondence: Dr. Sebastian B Gaigg, City University London, London, United Kingdom, s.b.gaigg@city.ac.uk Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Sebastian B Gaigg Esha Massand Dermot M Bowler Google Sebastian B Gaigg Esha Massand Dermot M Bowler Google Scholar Sebastian B Gaigg Esha Massand Dermot M Bowler PubMed Sebastian B Gaigg Esha Massand Dermot M Bowler Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.