Atypical neural self-representation in autism

Neurocase, 2011

One of the defining characteristics of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is difficulty with social interaction and communication with others, or interpersonal interaction. Accordingly, the majority of research efforts to date have focused on understanding the brain mechanisms underlying the deficits in social cognition and language associated with ASD. However, recent empirical and theoretical work has begun to reveal increasing evidence for altered self-representation, or intrapersonal cognition in ASD. Here we review recent studies of the self in ASD, focusing on paradigms examining 'physical' aspects of the self, including selfrecognition, agency and perspective taking, and 'psychological' aspects of the self, including selfknowledge and autobiographical memory. A review of the existing literature suggests that psychological, but not physical, aspects of self-representation are altered in ASD. One key brain region that has emerged as a potential locus of self-related deficits in ASD is the medial prefrontal cortex, part of a larger 'default mode network'. Collectively, the findings from these studies provide a more comprehensive framework for understanding the complex social, cognitive, and affective symptomatology of ASD.

PloS one, 2008

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by decreased interest and engagement in social interactions and by enhanced self-focus. While previous theoretical approaches to understanding autism have emphasized social impairments and altered interpersonal interactions, there is a recent shift towards understanding the nature of the representation of the self in individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Still, the neural mechanisms subserving self-representations in ASD are relatively unexplored. We used event-related fMRI to investigate brain responsiveness to images of the subjects' own face and to faces of others. Children with ASD and typically developing (TD) children viewed randomly presented digital morphs between their own face and a gender-matched other face, and made "self/other" judgments. Both groups of children activated a right premotor/prefrontal system when identifying images containing a greater percentage of the self face. However, while TD...

Social cognitive and …, 2008

Recent studies of autism have identified functional abnormalities of the default network during a passive resting state. Since the default network is also typically engaged during social, emotional and introspective processing, dysfunction of this network may underlie some of the difficulties individuals with autism exhibit in these broad domains. In the present experiment, we attempted to further delineate the nature of default network abnormality in autism using experimentally constrained social and introspective tasks. Thirteen autism and 12 control participants were scanned while making true/false judgments for various statements about themselves (SELF condition) or a close other person (OTHER), and pertaining to either psychological personality traits (INTERNAL) or observable characteristics and behaviors (EXTERNAL). In the ventral medial prefrontal cortex/ventral anterior cingulate cortex, activity was reduced in the autism group across all judgment conditions and also during a resting condition, suggestive of taskindependent dysfunction of this region. In other default network regions, overall levels of activity were not different between groups. Furthermore, in several of these regions, we found group by condition interactions only for INTERNAL/EXTERNAL judgments, and not SELF/OTHER judgments, suggestive of task-specific dysfunction. Overall, these results provide a more detailed view of default network functionality and abnormality in autism.

Brain Sciences

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by a fundamental change in self-awareness including seemingly paradoxical features like increased ego-centeredness and weakened self-referentiality. What is the neural basis of this so-called “self-paradox”? Conducting a meta-analytic review of fMRI rest and task studies, we show that ASD exhibits consistent hypofunction in anterior and posterior midline regions of the default-mode network (DMN) in both rest and task with decreased self–non-self differentiation. Relying on a multilayered nested hierarchical model of self, as recently established (Qin et al. 2020), we propose that ASD subjects cannot access the most upper layer of their self, the DMN-based mental self—they are locked-out of their own DMN and its mental self. This, in turn, results in strong weakening of their self-referentiality with decreases in both self-awareness and self–other distinction. Moreover, this blocks the extension of non-DMN cortical and subcortical regio...

This fMRI study investigated neural responses while making appraisals of self and other, across the social and academic domains, in children and adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Compared to neurotypical youth, those with ASD exhibited hypoactivation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex during self-appraisals. Responses in middle cingulate cortex (MCC) and anterior insula (AI) also distinguished between groups. Stronger activity in MCC and AI during self-appraisals was associated with better social functioning in the ASD group. Although self-appraisals were significantly more positive in the neurotypical group, positivity was unrelated to brain activity in these regions. Together, these results suggest that multiple brain regions support making self-appraisals in neurotypical development, and function atypically in youth with ASD.

Brain : a journal of neurology, 2015

Whole-brain voxel-based unbiased resting state functional connectivity was analysed in 418 subjects with autism and 509 matched typically developing individuals. We identified a key system in the middle temporal gyrus/superior temporal sulcus region that has reduced cortical functional connectivity (and increased with the medial thalamus), which is implicated in face expression processing involved in social behaviour. This system has reduced functional connectivity with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, which is implicated in emotion and social communication. The middle temporal gyrus system is also implicated in theory of mind processing. We also identified in autism a second key system in the precuneus/superior parietal lobule region with reduced functional connectivity, which is implicated in spatial functions including of oneself, and of the spatial environment. It is proposed that these two types of functionality, face expression-related, and of one's self and the environ...

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2003

Background: The fundamental social disturbance of autism is characterized, in part, by problems in the acquisition of joint attention skills in the first years of life, followed by impairments in the development of social cognition, as assessed on theory of mind (ToM) measures. Recently, studies have indicated that a system involving the dorsal medial-frontal cortex (DMFC), and the anterior cingulate (AC), may contribute to the development of the tendency to initiate joint attention in infancy. Similarly, research has implicated the DMFC/AC system in ToM performance in typical and atypical individuals. These data suggest it may be useful to consider the functions associated with this system in the developmental psychopathology of autism. Method: A review of the studies of the connections between the DMFC/AC system, joint attention and ToM task performance. Results and conclusions: This review raises the hypothesis that the DMFC/AC may be involved in the basic disturbance in social orienting in autism. The DMFAC/AC may also play a role in the capacity to monitor proprioceptive information concerning self-action and integrate this self-related information with exteroceptive perceptual information about the behavior of other people. A disturbance in these functions of the DMFC/ AC may contribute to the atypical development of intersubjectivity, joint attention and social cognition that may impair the lives of people with autism. Thus, impairment in the development of this system may constitute a neural substrate for socio-cognitive deficits in autism.

Recent Advances in Autism Spectrum Disorders - Volume I, 2013

self-concept to changing environments. Asperger (1974, p. 2026) refers to a disturbance and a weakness of the self in children with 'autistic psychopathy'. Psychoanalytic theories considered autism as a disorder of the self [4] based on the lack of ability in establishing stable internal representations of themselves and of others. The German psychiatrist Lutz (1968) interpreted autism as a disturbance of self-consciousness, self-related activities and self-perception. Powell and Jordan [6] (1993) suggested that individuals with ASD lack an 'experiencing self' that provides a personal dimension for ongoing events. This is consistent with Frith's [7] suggestion of an 'absent self' in autism. Hobson [8] put forward a developmental account of the self in autism emphasising impaired interpersonal relatedness, 'intersubjectivity' and its far-reaching consequences for the development of the self. In a recent study investigating whether children with autism show abnormal self-other connectedness, Hobson and Meyer [9] found a failure in autism to identify with another person. These authors suggest that this process of identifying with others is crucial for a normal development of self-other relationship and the basis for understanding other minds.

2011

Over the last 25 years, "mindblindness" (deficits in representing mental states) has been one of the primary explanations behind the hallmark social-communication difficulties in autism spectrum conditions (ASC). However, highlighting neural systems responsible for mindblindness and their relation to variation in social impairments has remained elusive. In this study we show that one of the neural systems responsible for mindblindness in ASC and its relation to social impairments is the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ). Twentynine adult males with ASC and 33 age and IQ-matched Controls were scanned with fMRI while making reflective mentalizing or physical judgments about themselves or another person. Regions of interest within mentalizing circuitry were examined for between-group differences in activation during mentalizing about self and other and correlations with social symptom severity. RTPJ was the only mentalizing region that responded atypically in ASC. In Controls, RTPJ was selectively more responsive to mentalizing than physical judgments. This selectivity for mentalizing was not apparent in ASC and generalized across both self and other. Selectivity of RTPJ for mentalizing was also associated with the degree of reciprocal social impairment in ASC. These results lend support to the idea that RTPJ is one important neural system behind mindblindness in ASC. Understanding the contribution of RTPJ in conjunction with other neural systems responsible for other component processes involved in social cognition will be illuminating in fully explaining the hallmark social-communication difficulties of autism.

Molecular Autism, 2020

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition with key deficits in social functioning. It is widely assumed that the biological underpinnings of social impairment are neurofunctional alterations in the "social brain," a neural circuitry involved in inferring the mental state of a social partner. However, previous evidence comes from small-scale studies and findings have been mixed. We therefore carried out the todate largest study on neural correlates of mentalizing in ASD. Methods: As part of the Longitudinal European Autism Project, we performed functional magnetic resonance imaging at six European sites in a large, well-powered, and deeply phenotyped sample of individuals with ASD (N = 205) and typically developing (TD) individuals (N = 189) aged 6 to 30 years. We presented an animated shapes task to assess and comprehensively characterize social brain activation during mentalizing. We tested for effects of age, diagnosis, and their association with symptom measures, including a continuous measure of autistic traits. Results: We observed robust effects of task. Within the ASD sample, autistic traits were moderately associated with functional activation in one of the key regions of the social brain, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. However, there were no significant effects of diagnosis on task performance and no effects of age and diagnosis on social brain responses. Besides a lack of mean group differences, our data provide no evidence for meaningful differences in the distribution of brain response measures. Extensive control analyses suggest that the lack of case-control differences was not due to a variety of potential confounders.