Early and late stage processing abnormalities in autism spectrum disorders: An ERP study

Abstract

This research assessed event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited during the processing of different kinds of visual stimuli among children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (n = 15) and typically developing (TD) children (n = 19). Within a simple visual oddball paradigm, participating children passively viewed fruit and vegetable images that were used as standard stimuli in addition to images of these foods with their usual colors modified to create novel stimuli and cartoon depictions of these images (i.e., “deviant” stimuli). Analyses revealed significant main effect differences between the groups for P100, N100 and P300 components; ASD group children showing longer P100 latencies, weaker N100 amplitudes and larger P300 amplitudes than did the TD group. A Group x Hemisphere interaction also emerged for N400 amplitudes but differences were not significant in simple-effects analyses. Together these results suggested children with ASD may be characterized by lower attention resource allocation and engagement during early stages of processing visual stimuli. However, ERPs in later processing stages suggested children with ASD and TD children have similar neural responses in attending to visual images as stimulus presentations continue.

Exploring the Event‐Related Potentials' Time Course of Associative Recognition in Autism

“…Together, the sequence of amplitude decrement on the P2 then FN400 potentials suggests a reduced integration of low-level perceptual into high-level conceptual information of pictures in ASD participants, associated with a reduced familiarity-based memory. This conclusion fits with recent EEG results of atypical integration between low-and high-level information with visual stimuli [Ortiz-Mantilla, Cantiani, Shafer, & Benasich, 2019;Wang, Yang, Liu, Shao, & Jackson, 2017], and recent model of visual episodic memory being less supported by semantic knowledge than verbal memory in individuals with ASD relative to TD controls [Desaunay et al, 2020;Semino et al, 2019].…”

Unconstrained multivariate EEG decoding can help detect lexical-semantic processing in individual children

“…Recent work has used EEG to assess covert cognitive abilities in non-communicative populations (see a recent review by Harrison and Connolly 11 ). In particular, language processing has been studied using EEG including in patients with disorder of consciousness 12,13 , schizophrenia 14,15 , and autistic individuals [19][20][21] [Note: we use 'identify-first' language ('autistic person') rather than person-first language ('person with autism'), because it is the preferred term of autistic activists (e.g. Sinclair, 2013) and many autistic people and their families 17 and is less associated with stigma 18 ].…”

Pathogenetical and Neurophysiological Features of Patients with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Phenomena and Diagnoses

“…Abnormality in these ERP features are often explored as biomarkers of sensory processing in ASD. A common finding on ERP is atypically increased latency of N100 in ASD [98], which may reflect functional changes of the connectivity of the neuronal networks in patients. Some other studies have also reported that the amplitudes of P50 and N100 are lower in ASD, which could reflect reduced feedback strengths in corticothalamic loops [99].…”