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Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain

Nature Neuroscience volume 12, pages 970–972 (2009)Cite this article

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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