Casartelli Luca, Molteni Massimo, Ronconi Luca
Child Psychopathology Unit, Scientific Institute, IRCCS Eugenio Medea Bosisio Parini, Italy; Developmental Psychopathology Unit, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Italy.
Child Psychopathology Unit, Scientific Institute, IRCCS Eugenio Medea Bosisio Parini, Italy.
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2016 Apr;63:98-105. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.02.001. Epub 2016 Feb 16.
Difficulties in the social domain and motor anomalies have been widely investigated in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, they have been generally considered as independent, and therefore tackled separately. Recent advances in neuroscience have hypothesized that the cortical motor system can play a role not only as a controller of elementary physical features of movement, but also in a complex domain as social cognition. Here, going beyond previous studies on ASD that described difficulties in the motor and in the social domain separately, we focus on the impact of motor mechanisms anomalies on social functioning. We consider behavioral, electrophysiological and neuroimaging findings supporting the idea that motor cognition is a critical "intermediate phenotype" for ASD. Motor cognition anomalies in ASD affect the processes of extraction, codification and subsequent translation of "external" social information into the motor system. Intriguingly, this alternative "motor" approach to the social domain difficulties in ASD may be promising to bridge the gap between recent experimental findings and clinical practice, potentially leading to refined preventive approaches and successful treatments.
在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中，社交领域的困难和运动异常已得到广泛研究。然而，它们通常被视为相互独立的，因此是分开处理的。神经科学的最新进展推测，皮层运动系统不仅可以作为运动基本物理特征的控制器发挥作用，还可以在社交认知这一复杂领域发挥作用。在此，超越以往分别描述ASD运动和社交领域困难的研究，我们关注运动机制异常对社交功能的影响。我们考虑行为、电生理和神经影像学研究结果，这些结果支持运动认知是ASD关键的“中间表型”这一观点。ASD中的运动认知异常会影响“外部”社交信息提取、编码以及随后转化到运动系统的过程。有趣的是，这种针对ASD社交领域困难的替代性“运动”方法可能有望弥合近期实验结果与临床实践之间的差距，潜在地带来完善的预防方法和成功的治疗方案。
