Haigh Sarah M, Brosseau Pat, Eack Shaun M, Leitman David I, Salisbury Dean F, Behrmann Marlene
Department of Psychology and Institute for Neuroscience, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, United States.
Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 May 25;13:844830. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.844830. eCollection 2022.
Individuals with autism typically experience a range of symptoms, including abnormal sensory sensitivities. However, there are conflicting reports on the sensory profiles that characterize the sensory experience in autism that often depend on the type of stimulus. Here, we examine early auditory processing to simple changes in pitch and later auditory processing of more complex emotional utterances. We measured electroencephalography in 24 adults with autism and 28 controls. First, tones (1046.5Hz/C6, 1108.7Hz/C#6, or 1244.5Hz/D#6) were repeated three times or nine times before the pitch changed. Second, utterances of delight or frustration were repeated three or six times before the emotion changed. In response to the simple pitched tones, the autism group exhibited larger mismatch negativity (MMN) after nine standards compared to controls and produced greater trial-to-trial variability (TTV). In response to the prosodic utterances, the autism group showed smaller P3 responses when delight changed to frustration compared to controls. There was no significant correlation between ERPs to pitch and ERPs to prosody. Together, this suggests that early auditory processing is hyper-sensitive in autism whereas later processing of prosodic information is hypo-sensitive. The impact the different sensory profiles have on perceptual experience in autism may be key to identifying behavioral treatments to reduce symptoms.
自闭症患者通常会经历一系列症状，包括异常的感官敏感性。然而，关于自闭症患者感官体验特征的感官概况报告相互矛盾，这通常取决于刺激的类型。在这里，我们研究了对音高简单变化的早期听觉处理以及对更复杂情感话语的后期听觉处理。我们测量了24名自闭症成年人和28名对照组的脑电图。首先，在音高变化之前，音调（1046.5Hz/C6、1108.7Hz/C#6或1244.5Hz/D#6）重复三次或九次。其次，在情感变化之前，愉悦或沮丧的话语重复三次或六次。对于简单的音调，与对照组相比，自闭症组在九个标准刺激后表现出更大的失配负波（MMN），并且试验间变异性（TTV）更大。对于韵律话语，与对照组相比，当愉悦变为沮丧时，自闭症组的P3反应较小。对音高的事件相关电位（ERP）与对韵律的ERP之间没有显著相关性。总之，这表明自闭症患者的早期听觉处理过于敏感，而后期韵律信息处理则不敏感。不同的感官概况对自闭症患者感知体验的影响可能是确定减轻症状的行为治疗方法的关键。
