Cavinato L, Cardinaux A, Jain K, Jamal W, Kjelgaard M, Sinha P, Barbieri R
Annu Int Conf IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2019 Jul;2019:4942-4945. doi: 10.1109/EMBC.2019.8856641.
Sensory abnormalities are widespread in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, their definition is still quite subjective and vague. Here we propose a novel approach for characterization of Autonomic Nervous System responses to sensory stimulation based on electrocardiogram (ECG) assessment. In particular, we develop a preliminary study where autonomic responses of both autistic (ASD = 5) and neurotypical (NT = 5) participants have been evaluated in terms of changes in responsiveness to repeated stimuli. Autonomic control has been estimated via high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) and low-frequency HRV (LF-HRV). Results show significant differences among groups for the HRV measures (p value = 0.0158), supported by expected changes of HF (p value = 0.0079) and LF (p value = 0.0079) trends over stimulations. We thus conclude that an overall decrease in autonomic arousal can give important insights for devising new habituation metrics in NT and ASD individuals.
感觉异常在自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）中很普遍。然而，它们的定义仍然相当主观和模糊。在此，我们提出一种基于心电图（ECG）评估来表征自主神经系统对感觉刺激反应的新方法。具体而言，我们开展了一项初步研究，其中对自闭症患者（ASD = 5）和神经典型个体（NT = 5）的自主反应进行了评估，评估内容为对重复刺激的反应性变化。通过高频心率变异性（HF-HRV）和低频心率变异性（LF-HRV）来估计自主控制。结果显示，心率变异性测量在各组之间存在显著差异（p值 = 0.0158），高频（p值 = 0.0079）和低频（p值 = 0.0079）趋势在刺激过程中的预期变化也支持了这一结果。因此，我们得出结论，自主唤醒的总体下降可为设计针对神经典型个体和自闭症个体的新习惯化指标提供重要见解。
