Hillus Josephina, Moseley Rachel, Roepke Stefan, Mohr Bettina
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Charité Universitätsmedizin, Campus Benjamin Franklin, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Bournemouth University, Poole, United Kingdom.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2019 Jul 25;13:256. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2019.00256. eCollection 2019.
Several studies indicate the functional importance of the motor cortex for higher cognition, language and semantic processing, and place the neural substrate of these processes in sensorimotor action-perception circuits linking motor, sensory and perisylvian language regions. Interestingly, in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), semantic processing of action and emotion words seems to be impaired and is associated with hypoactivity of the motor cortex during semantic processing. In this study, the relationship between semantic processing, fine motor skills and clinical symptoms was investigated in 19 individuals with ASD and 22 typically-developing matched controls. Participants completed two semantic decision tasks involving words from different semantic categories, a test of alexithymia (the Toronto Alexithymia Scale), and a test of fine motor skills (the Purdue Pegboard Test). A significant Group × Word Category interaction in accuracy ( < 0.05) demonstrated impaired semantic processing for action words, but not object words in the autistic group. There was no significant group difference when processing abstract emotional words or abstract neutral words. Moreover, our study revealed deficits in fine motor skills as well as evidence for alexithymia in the ASD group, but not in neurotypical controls. However, these motor deficits did not correlate significantly with impairments in action-semantic processing. We interpret the data in terms of an underlying dysfunction of the action-perception system in ASD and its specific impact on semantic language processing.
多项研究表明，运动皮层对于高级认知、语言和语义处理具有重要功能，并将这些过程的神经基础置于连接运动、感觉和颞周语言区域的感觉运动动作-感知回路中。有趣的是，在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体中，动作和情感词汇的语义处理似乎受损，并且与语义处理过程中运动皮层的活动不足有关。在本研究中，对19名患有ASD的个体和22名发育正常的匹配对照组个体，研究了语义处理、精细运动技能与临床症状之间的关系。参与者完成了两项语义决策任务，涉及来自不同语义类别的词汇、一项述情障碍测试（多伦多述情障碍量表）和一项精细运动技能测试（普渡钉板测试）。在准确性方面存在显著的组×词汇类别交互作用（<0.05），表明自闭症组中动作词汇的语义处理受损，但物体词汇的语义处理未受损。在处理抽象情感词汇或抽象中性词汇时，两组之间没有显著差异。此外，我们的研究揭示了ASD组存在精细运动技能缺陷以及述情障碍的证据，但在神经典型对照组中未发现。然而，这些运动缺陷与动作语义处理障碍没有显著相关性。我们根据ASD中动作-感知系统的潜在功能障碍及其对语义语言处理的特定影响来解释这些数据。
