Common vs. Distinct Visuomotor Control Deficits in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Schizophrenia

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are neurodevelopmental disorders with partly overlapping clinical phenotypes including sensorimotor impairments. However, direct comparative studies on sensorimotor control across these two disorders are lacking. We set out to compare visuomotor upper limb impairment, quantitatively, in ASD and SCZ. Patients with ASD (N = 24) were compared to previously published data from healthy control participants (N = 24) and patients with SCZ (N = 24). All participants performed a visuomotor grip force‐tracking task in single and dual‐task conditions. The dual‐task (high cognitive load) presented either visual distractors or required mental addition during grip force‐tracking. Motor inhibition was measured by duration of force release and from principal component analysis (PCA) of the participant's force‐trajectory. Common impairments in patients with ASD and SCZ included increased force‐tracking error in single‐task condition compared to controls, a further increase in error in dual‐task conditions, and prolonged duration of force release. These three sensorimotor impairments were found in both patient groups. In contrast, distinct impairments in patients with ASD included greater error under high cognitive load and delayed onset of force release compared to SCZ. The PCA inhibition component was higher in ASD than SCZ and controls, correlated to duration of force release, and explained group differences in tracking error. In conclusion, sensorimotor impairments related to motor inhibition are common to ASD and SCZ, but more severe in ASD, consistent with enhanced neurodevelopmental load in ASD. Furthermore, impaired motor anticipation may represent a further specific impairment in ASD. Autism Res 2020, 13: 885‐896. © 2020 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Lay summary Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia (SCZ) are neurodevelopmental disorders with partly overlapping and partly distinct clinical symptoms. Sensorimotor impairments rank among these symptoms, but it is less clear whether they are shared or distinct. In this study, we showed using a grip force task that sensorimotor impairments related to motor inhibition are common to ASD and SCZ, but more severe in ASD. Impaired motor anticipation may represent a further specific impairment in ASD.

A multimethod approach to assessing motor skills in boys and girls with autism spectrum disorder

“…Interestingly, previous studies have reported alterations in motor anticipation in ASD (e.g. Carment et al, 2020;Crippa et al, 2015;Fabbri-Destro et al, 2009;Forti et al, 2011). The findings of a diagnosis-by-sex interaction on kinematic PC4 partially resembled Sacrey and colleagues' (2018) assessment of the motor act of reaching-to-grasp in children at high/ low risk of ASD.…”

Reliability of the Dynavision task in virtual reality to explore visuomotor phenotypes

“…Here we got a fine distinction of visuomotor phenotypes among sport students thanks to the VMVR task associated to the capture of head movements. Getting finer analyses of visuomotor integration abilities has several benefits such as screening neurological soft signs 41 or tracking early progress in rehabilitation 13 and vision training programs 14 . Here by adding head movement analysis, we discriminated individual behaviors in eye-hand coordination among young and healthy people, which is promising for exploring visuomotor phenotypes in more heterogeneous groups.…”

“…In such people, reading and verbalizing numbers while coordinating eye-hand movements certainly represents very little difficulty in a dual-task setting. Rather, placing high mental demand relatively to the user’s cognitive capacity makes sense as demonstrated recently to distinguish common and distinct visuomotor impairments in autism and schizophrenia 41 . This is where VMVR has obvious advantages because of VR flexibility to design cognitive demands that can be adapted to the user (either children, elderly or athletes) as well to their impairment.…”

Motor skills predict adaptive behavior in autistic children and adolescents

“…Further, Miller et al (2021) reported that more than 90% of autistic children met the criteria for clinically significant motor difficulties on the Movement Assessment Battery for Children, Second Edition (MABC‐2; Henderson et al, 2007), the gold‐standard standardized assessment of motor ability. Examining specific motor skills, researchers have measured differences in quiet standing (Lim et al, 2017), leaning (Miller et al, 2019; Wang et al, 2016), stepping (Bojanek et al, 2020), reaching (Glazebrook et al, 2006), grasping (Carment et al, 2020; Mosconi et al, 2015; Travers et al, 2017), catching (Chen et al, 2019), and tool use (Mostofsky et al, 2006). These motor difficulties are implicated in social, cognitive, and adaptive function and in turn, have implications for autistic children's quality of life and mental health (Tamplain & Miller, 2020).…”