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Autism Linked to Multisensory Integration
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100819173840.htm
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2010) -- A new study by researchers at Albert
Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has provided
concrete evidence that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD)
process sensory information such as sound, touch and vision
differently than typically developing children.
The study, which appears in the August 17 online issue of Autism
Research, supports decades of clinical and anecdotal observations that
individuals with ASD have difficulty coping with multiple sources of
sensory information. The Einstein finding offers new insights into
autism and could lead to objective measures for evaluating the
effectiveness of autism therapies.
"One of the classic presentations of autism is the child in the corner
with his hands over his ears rocking back and forth trying to block
out the environment," said senior author Sophie Molholm, Ph.D.,
associate professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of
Neuroscience and of pediatrics. "People have long theorized that these
children might not be integrating information across the senses very
well. If you have all these sights and sounds coming at you but you
can't put them together in a meaningful way, the world can be an
overwhelming place."
The theory that autistic kids have trouble processing multisensory
information has not been reliably supported by behavioral studies, and
has rarely, if at all, been tested using measures of brain activity.
Over the last few years, Dr. Molholm and her colleagues have been
refining methods for measuring multisensory integration (MSI) using
brainwave electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings.
In the current study, MSI was measured in 17 ASD children, ages 6 to
16, and 17 typically developing children matched for age and
non-verbal IQ. The children watched a silent video of their choice
while they were presented with unrelated sounds and vibrations. The
auditory and vibrational stimuli were presented separately (creating
so-called unisensory conditions) and then together (multisensory
condition), which acted as the researchers' index of MSI. The
children's EEG responses to the unisensory conditions were summed and
compared to their EEG responses to multisensory conditions.
The responses of the typically developing children to the multisensory
stimuli exceeded the sum of their responses to the unisensory
stimuli--an indication of healthy MSI, according to the researchers. In
the ASD children, by contrast, the differences between the sum of
children's unisensory responses and their MSI responses were not
nearly as pronounced, indicating that these kids were not integrating
multisensory information as effectively.
"Our data makes a compelling case, at least for these conditions, that
there are differences in multisensory integration between the two
groups," said Dr. Molholm.
After our nerves are stimulated, "sensory information arrives in the
brain's cortex within 20 milliseconds (ms), or 20/1000ths of a
second," said co-author John Foxe, Ph.D., professor in the Dominick P.
Purpura Department of Neuroscience and of pediatrics and director of
research of the Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at
Einstein. "Then it takes an additional 100 to 200 ms for the brain to
integrate information arriving from different senses, since many brain
regions are involved in analyzing it."
In this study, the differences between the typically developing and
ASD children were most striking for that time interval in which
multisensory stimuli is normally processed. "We saw robust MSI in the
typically developing kids from 100 and 200 ms after sensory
stimulation reached the brain's cortex," said Dr. Foxe. "But in the
ASD kids, MSI occurred significantly later -- at about 310 ms -- and
at a much lower level."
"This doesn't mean that the children with ASD didn't integrate the
information at all," he added. "It does mean that they didn't
integrate it as effectively as they should have, given their age and
maturity. They may go on to integrate well later in life. We don't
know. This is a single slice of the developmental trajectory."
"This was a much-needed study of multisensory integration in autism,"
said Barry E. Stein, Ph.D., professor and chair of neurobiology &
anatomy at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, who was not
involved in the Einstein study. "Using simple logic and standard
techniques for electrically mapping the brain, the authors have
identified defects in the way ASD individuals synthesize cues from
different senses. In doing so, they have not only helped confirm the
insights of parents and clinicians, but they've improved our
understanding of how the behavioral differences in children with ASD
may result from sensory anomalies."
"Today, there's a cottage industry -- actually more like a
military-industrial complex -- for multisensory integration therapies
for children with autism," said Dr. Foxe. "A lot of parents'
hard-earned cash goes into these interventions, all in the absence of
actual empirical evidence that there is anything wrong with MSI in
these children or that these therapies do any good."
The researchers are currently evaluating MSI in children from 6 years
of age through early adulthood to better understand the developmental
trajectory of multisensory integration. They also plan to study MSI in
lower-functioning ASD children. "This experimental paradigm is
especially good for that, because it makes so little demand on the
kids," said Dr. Foxe. "As you can imagine, asking them to do tasks
doesn't work very well."
Support for this research was provided by Cure Autism Now, the
National Institute of Mental Health, the Wallace Research Foundation
and the Canadian Institute of Health Research.
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by
ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by Albert Einstein College
of Medicine.
Journal Reference:
1. Natalie Russo et al. Multisensory processing in children with
autism: high-density electrical mapping of auditory-somatosensory
integration. Autism Research, August 17, 2010
"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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