Sears L L, Finn P R, Steinmetz J E
Department of Pediatrics, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Kentucky.
J Autism Dev Disord. 1994 Dec;24(6):737-51. doi: 10.1007/BF02172283.
Cerebellar and limbic system pathologies have been reported in persons with autism. Because these brain areas are involved centrally in the acquisition and performance in classical eye-blink conditioning, this study evaluated conditioning in 11 persons with autism. Compared to matched controls, persons with autism learned the task faster but performed short-latency, high-amplitude conditioned responses. In addition, differences in learning the extinction rates systematically varied with age thus suggesting a developmental conditioning abnormality in autism. The observed pattern of eye-blink conditioning may indicate that persons with autism have the ability to rapidly associate paired stimuli but, depending on processing of certain contextual information, have impairments in modulating the timing and topography of the learned responses. This abnormality may relate to deviant cerebellar-hippocampal interactions. The classical eye-blink conditioning paradigm may provide a useful model for understanding the biological and behavioral bases of autism.
自闭症患者中已报告存在小脑和边缘系统病变。由于这些脑区在经典眨眼条件反射的习得和表现中起核心作用，本研究评估了11名自闭症患者的条件反射情况。与匹配的对照组相比，自闭症患者学习任务更快，但表现出潜伏期短、幅度高的条件反应。此外，学习消退率的差异随年龄系统性变化，因此提示自闭症存在发育性条件反射异常。观察到的眨眼条件反射模式可能表明，自闭症患者有能力快速将配对刺激联系起来，但根据某些情境信息的处理情况，在调节习得反应的时间和形式方面存在障碍。这种异常可能与小脑 - 海马体相互作用异常有关。经典眨眼条件反射范式可能为理解自闭症的生物学和行为基础提供一个有用的模型。
