Frederick J. and Marion A. Schindler Cognitive Neurophysiology Laboratory, Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience, Department of Neuroscience, University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, Rochester, New York 14642
Development and Behavioral Pediatrics, Golisano Children's Hospital, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14642.
J Neurosci. 2023 Mar 29;43(13):2424-2438. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1192-22.2023. Epub 2023 Mar 1.
Individuals on the autism spectrum often exhibit atypicality in their sensory perception, but the neural underpinnings of these perceptual differences remain incompletely understood. One proposed mechanism is an imbalance in higher-order feedback re-entrant inputs to early sensory cortices during sensory perception, leading to increased propensity to focus on local object features over global context. We explored this theory by measuring visual evoked potentials during contour integration as considerable work has revealed that these processes are largely driven by feedback inputs from higher-order ventral visual stream regions. We tested the hypothesis that autistic individuals would have attenuated evoked responses to illusory contours compared with neurotypical controls. Electrophysiology was acquired while 29 autistic and 31 neurotypical children (7-17 years old, inclusive of both males and females) passively viewed a random series of Kanizsa figure stimuli, each consisting of four inducers that were aligned either at random rotational angles or such that contour integration would form an illusory square. Autistic children demonstrated attenuated automatic contour integration over lateral occipital regions relative to neurotypical controls. The data are discussed in terms of the role of predictive feedback processes on perception of global stimulus features and the notion that weakened "priors" may play a role in the visual processing anomalies seen in autism. Children on the autism spectrum differ from typically developing children in many aspects of their processing of sensory stimuli. One proposed mechanism for these differences is an imbalance in higher-order feedback to primary sensory regions, leading to an increased focus on local object features rather than global context. However, systematic investigation of these feedback mechanisms remains limited. Using EEG and a visual illusion paradigm that is highly dependent on intact feedback processing, we demonstrated significant disruptions to visual feedback processing in children with autism. This provides much needed experimental evidence that advances our understanding of the contribution of feedback processing to visual perception in autism spectrum disorder.
自闭症谱系个体在感官知觉中经常表现出非典型性，但这些感知差异的神经基础仍不完全清楚。一种提出的机制是在感官知觉期间，早期感觉皮层的高阶反馈重入输入不平衡，导致对局部物体特征的关注增加而对全局上下文的关注减少。我们通过测量轮廓整合期间的视觉诱发电位来探索这一理论，因为大量研究表明，这些过程主要由来自高阶腹侧视觉流区域的反馈输入驱动。我们假设自闭症个体的错觉轮廓诱发反应会比神经典型对照组减弱。在 29 名自闭症儿童和 31 名神经典型对照组儿童（7-17 岁，包括男性和女性）被动观看随机系列 Kanizsa 图形刺激时获取了电生理学数据，每个刺激由四个诱导器组成，这些诱导器要么以随机旋转角度对齐，要么以形成错觉正方形的方式对齐。与神经典型对照组相比，自闭症儿童在外侧枕叶区域表现出自动轮廓整合减弱。数据是根据预测反馈过程对整体刺激特征感知的作用以及“先验”减弱可能在自闭症中视觉处理异常中起作用的概念进行讨论的。自闭症谱系中的儿童在处理感官刺激的许多方面与发育正常的儿童不同。这些差异的一种提出的机制是高阶反馈到初级感觉区域的不平衡，导致对局部物体特征的关注增加，而对全局上下文的关注减少。然而，对这些反馈机制的系统研究仍然有限。使用 EEG 和一种高度依赖于完整反馈处理的视觉错觉范式，我们在自闭症儿童中证明了视觉反馈处理的显著中断。这提供了急需的实验证据，有助于我们理解反馈处理对自闭症谱系障碍中视觉感知的贡献。
