Abstract
A full understanding of a complex spectrum of mental conditions such as autism would show how the brain dynamics of autistic individuals give rise to their behavioral symptoms and how the brain dynamics of normal individuals are changed in autism. This article summarizes neural models that contribute to both goals. One of these neural models is called the iSTART (imbalanced Spectrally Timed Adaptive Resonance Theory) model. iSTART proposes how cognitive, emotional, timing, and motor processes that involve brain regions like the sensory, temporal, and prefrontal cortex; amygdala; hippocampus; cerebellum; and basal ganglia may interact together to create and perpetuate autistic symptoms. These model processes were originally developed as part of the START model to explain data concerning how the brain controls normal behaviors. The iSTART model is a synthesis of three models that shows how autistic behavioral symptoms may arise from prescribed breakdowns in several types of brain processes: underaroused emotional depression in the amygdala and related affective brain regions (Cognitive-Emotional-Motor, or CogEM, model) and how it influences Theory of Mind and hyperreactivity to novel events; high vigilance attentional processing and how it influences the learning of hyperspecific recognition categories and narrow attention in temporal and prefrontal cortices (Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, model); and breakdowns of adaptively timed attentional and motor circuits in the hippocampal system, cerebellum, and basal ganglia (Spectral Timing model) and how they may hinder social development and language development. iSTART clarifies how malfunctions in a subset of these mechanisms can, though environmentally mediated feedback, cause and maintain problems with them all. The SMART (Synchronous Matching ART) model additionally proposes how chronically high vigilance may be traced to how acetylcholine is released from the nucleus basalis of Meynert. Finally, the CRIB (Circular Reactions for Imitative Behavior) model clarifies how imitation learning can occur between a student and a teacher who experience the world from different perspectives and how the development of social cognitive capabilities such as joint attention and imitation learning with such a teacher may be impaired by the above problems.
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Grossberg, S. (2014). Neural Dynamics of Autistic Behaviors: Learning, Recognition, Attention, Emotion, Timing, and Social Cognition. In: Patel, V., Preedy, V., Martin, C. (eds) Comprehensive Guide to Autism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4788-7_190
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