Department of Motor Behavior, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.
Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
Psychophysiology. 2021 Mar;58(3):e13740. doi: 10.1111/psyp.13740. Epub 2020 Dec 6.
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have difficulties recognizing and understanding others' actions. The goal of the present study was to determine whether children with and without ASD show differences in the way they process stimuli depicting Biological Motion (BM). Thirty-two children aged 7-16 (16 ASD and 16 typically developing (TD) controls) participated in two experiments. In the first experiment, electroencephalography (EEG) was used to record low (8-10 Hz) and high (10-13 Hz) mu and beta (15-25 Hz) bands during the observation three different Point Light Displays (PLD) of action. In the second experiment, participants answered to action-recognition tests and their accuracy and response time were recorded, together with their eye-movements. There were no group differences in EEG data (first experiment), indicating that children with and without ASD do not differ in their mu suppression (8-13 Hz) and beta activity (15-25 Hz). However, behavioral data from second experiment revealed that children with ASD were less accurate and slower than TD children in their responses to an action recognition task. In addition, eye-tracking data indicated that children with ASD paid less attention to the body compared to the background when watching PLD stimuli. Our results indicate that the more the participants focused on the PLDs, the more they displayed mu suppressions. These results could challenge the results of previous studies that had not controlled for visual attention and found a possible deficit in MNS functions of individuals with ASD. We discuss possible mechanisms and interpretations.
自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）个体在识别和理解他人行为方面存在困难。本研究旨在确定 ASD 儿童和非 ASD 儿童在处理生物运动（BM）刺激时是否存在差异。32 名 7-16 岁的儿童（16 名 ASD 和 16 名典型发育（TD）对照组）参加了两个实验。在第一个实验中，使用脑电图（EEG）记录了观察三个不同点光显示（PLD）动作时低（8-10Hz）和高（10-13Hz）mu 和 beta（15-25Hz）频段的脑电活动。在第二个实验中，参与者回答了动作识别测试，记录了他们的准确性和反应时间，以及他们的眼球运动。EEG 数据（第一个实验）没有组间差异，表明 ASD 儿童和非 ASD 儿童在 mu 抑制（8-13Hz）和 beta 活动（15-25Hz）方面没有差异。然而，第二个实验的行为数据表明，在动作识别任务中，ASD 儿童的反应准确性和速度均低于 TD 儿童。此外，眼动追踪数据表明，与观看 PLD 刺激时相比，ASD 儿童对身体的关注较少，而对背景的关注较多。我们的研究结果表明，参与者越关注 PLD，他们的 mu 抑制就越多。这些结果可能挑战了之前没有控制视觉注意力但发现 ASD 个体的 MNS 功能可能存在缺陷的研究结果。我们讨论了可能的机制和解释。
