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Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain

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Abstract

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in motor control, imitation and social function. Does a dysfunction in the neural basis of representing internal models of action contribute to these problems? We measured patterns of generalization as children learned to control a novel tool and found that the autistic brain built a stronger than normal association between self-generated motor commands and proprioceptive feedback; furthermore, the greater the reliance on proprioception, the greater the child's impairments in social function and imitation.

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Figure 1: Learning and generalization of an internal model in typically developing children and children with ASD.
Figure 2: Motor generalization patterns as a predictor of social and imitation abilities.

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by grants from the National Alliance for Autism Research/Autism Speaks, the US National Institutes of Health (R01 NS037422, R01 NS048527 and K02 NS044850) and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, a US National Institutes of Health/National Center for Research Resources Clinical and Transitional Science Award Program (UL1-RR025005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Courtney C Haswell, Jun Izawa & Reza Shadmehr

  2. Kennedy Krieger Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Lauren R Dowell & Stewart H Mostofsky

  3. Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA

    Stewart H Mostofsky

Authors
  1. Courtney C Haswell
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  2. Jun Izawa
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  3. Lauren R Dowell
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  4. Stewart H Mostofsky
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  5. Reza Shadmehr
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Contributions

C.C.H. and J.I. conducted the robot experiments, L.R.D. conducted the social, praxis and imitation experiments and R.S. and S.H.M. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reza Shadmehr.

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Supplementary Table 1 and Supplementary Methods (PDF 60 kb)

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Haswell, C., Izawa, J., Dowell, L. et al. Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain. Nat Neurosci 12, 970–972 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.2356

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