Enhancing Integration — Autism has been characterized as a disorder in social cognition and communication that may be related to defects in integrating corresponding multisensory social stimuli, such as auditory information in speech sounds and visual information from accompanying lip movements. In work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex, graduate student Alice Brandwein investigated the neurophysiological basis of previously reported sensory integration abnormalities in children with autism by examining how their brain integrates very basic, non-social audiovisual information. In testing a large group of high-functioning autistic children, the researchers found severe integration deficits in the processing of audiovisual inputs that were apparent a mere fraction of a second after the audiovisual stimulus. Their findings indicate that there are underlying neurophysiological differences in how children with autism integrate basic audiovisual information, which might contribute to characteristic social communication deficits. In future work, the investigators plan to test whether video game-based interventions directed at enhancing integration of multisensory inputs translate to gains in the ability of autistic patients to process complex audiovisual social information Ms. Brandwein conducted her research under Dr. Sophie Molholm, associate professor of pediatrics and of neuroscience, and the Muriel and Harold Block Faculty Scholar in Mental Illness.
Posted on: Thursday, July 05, 2012