Autism as a disorder of prediction

Abstract

A rich collection of empirical findings accumulated over the past three decades attests to the diversity of traits that constitute the autism phenotypes. It is unclear whether subsets of these traits share any underlying causality. This lack of a cohesive conceptualization of the disorder has complicated the search for broadly effective therapies, diagnostic markers, and neural/genetic correlates. In this paper, we describe how theoretical considerations and a review of empirical data lead to the hypothesis that some salient aspects of the autism phenotype may be manifestations of an underlying impairment in predictive abilities. With compromised prediction skills, an individual with autism inhabits a seemingly "magical" world wherein events occur unexpectedly and without cause. Immersion in such a capricious environment can prove overwhelming and compromise one's ability to effectively interact with it. If validated, this hypothesis has the potential of providing unifying insights into multiple aspects of autism, with attendant benefits for improving diagnosis and therapy.probabilistic processing | endophenotype | Markov models | theory | heterogeneity

A computational perspective on autism

“…Using neural network simulations, we show that a reduction in the amount of inhibition that occurs through divisive normalization can account for perceptual consequences reported in the disorder, providing a bridge between an E/I imbalance and the behavioral characteristics of autism. The simulations further establish a link between divisive normalization and high-level theories about how autism may alter the influence of past experience on the interpretation of current sensory information (18)(19)(20). A key result of the simulations is the implication of the neuronal milieu (the contextual environment of neuronal population activity in which neurons are embedded) in autism.…”

“…Although normal contrast sensitivity is consistent with intact gain control, it is possible that sensory hypersensitivity in autism (83) reflects gain control deficits. It is thus interesting to speculate that steadystate values of ν are not altered in autism, but the temporal process by which ν changes based on sensory stimulation is impaired (20). In addition, a reduction in c could affect neural decoding by reducing noise correlations between neurons (84), or decreasing the efficiency of simple decoders (85), both of which are potential consequences of a reduced influence of the neuronal milieu on the activity of single cells.…”

“…Several papers have suggested that autism impairs the ability to perform statistical inference about the sensory environment (18)(19)(20), reducing the influence of past experience on the interpretation of current sensory information. Although this hypothesis can be formulated in several ways, the Bayesian framework provides an intuitive approach, describing how incoming sensory information is combined with past experience to infer the most likely stimulus.…”

Disentangling signal and noise in autism spectrum disorder

“…As part of the wider trend in computational psychiatry (Friston, Stephan, Montague, & Dolan, 2014;Montague, Dolan, Friston, & Dayan, 2012;, recent explanatory accounts of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) take inspiration from well-articulated information processing models of typical cognition (Hohwy, 2013;Lawson, Rees, & Friston, 2014;Pellicano & Burr, 2012;Qian & Lipkin, 2011;Quattrocki & Friston, 2014;Rosenberg, Patterson, & Angelaki, 2015;Sinha et al, 2014;Van de Cruys et al, 2014). Particularly influential in most of these new proposals for ASD is the predictive coding framework (Clark, 2013;Friston, 2010).…”

“…It follows that we should be careful in stating that individuals with ASD cannot form informative priors (only ''weak" or low precision priors), as several authors seem to suggest (Manning, Tibber, Charman, Dakin, & Pellicano, 2015;Pellicano & Burr, 2012;Sinha et al, 2014;Zaidel, Goin-Kochel, & Angelaki, 2015). Surely, in lots of cases individuals with ASD can detect and learn to use regularities (in the form of informative priors).…”