Oberman Lindsay M, Ramachandran Vilayanur S
University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA.
Soc Neurosci. 2008;3(3-4):348-55. doi: 10.1080/17470910701563681.
Autism is a complex disorder, characterized by social, cognitive, communicative, and motor symptoms. One suggestion, proposed in the current study, to explain the spectrum of symptoms is an underlying impairment in multisensory integration (MSI) systems such as a mirror neuron-like system. The mirror neuron system, thought to play a critical role in skills such as imitation, empathy, and language can be thought of as a multisensory system, converting sensory stimuli into motor representations. Consistent with this, we report preliminary evidence for deficits in a task thought to tap into MSI--"the bouba-kiki task" in children with ASD. The bouba-kiki effect is produced when subjects are asked to pair nonsense shapes with nonsense "words". We found that neurotypical children chose the nonsense "word" whose phonemic structure corresponded with the visual shape of the stimuli 88% of the time. This is presumably because of mirror neuron-like multisensory systems that integrate the visual shape with the corresponding motor gestures used to pronounce the nonsense word. Surprisingly, individuals with ASD only chose the corresponding name 56% of the time. The poor performance by the ASD group on this task suggests a deficit in MSI, perhaps related to impaired MSI brain systems. Though this is a behavioral study, it provides a testable hypothesis for the communication impairments in children with ASD that implicates a specific neural system and fits well with the current findings suggesting an impairment in the mirror systems in individuals with ASD.
自闭症是一种复杂的疾病，其特征包括社交、认知、沟通和运动方面的症状。在当前研究中提出的一种解释症状谱系的观点是，多感官整合（MSI）系统存在潜在损伤，例如类似镜像神经元的系统。镜像神经元系统被认为在模仿、共情和语言等技能中起关键作用，可以被看作是一个多感官系统，将感觉刺激转化为运动表征。与此一致的是，我们报告了在一项被认为能考察多感官整合的任务——自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）儿童的“布巴-基基任务”中存在缺陷的初步证据。当要求受试者将无意义的形状与无意义的“单词”配对时，就会产生布巴-基基效应。我们发现，神经发育正常的儿童有88%的时间会选择其音素结构与刺激视觉形状相对应的无意义“单词”。这大概是因为类似镜像神经元的多感官系统将视觉形状与用于发出无意义单词读音的相应运动手势整合在了一起。令人惊讶的是，患有ASD的个体只有56%的时间会选择相应的名称。ASD组在这项任务中的表现不佳表明多感官整合存在缺陷，可能与多感官整合脑系统受损有关。虽然这是一项行为研究，但它为ASD儿童的沟通障碍提供了一个可检验的假设，该假设涉及一个特定的神经系统，并且与目前表明ASD个体镜像系统受损的研究结果非常吻合。
