The Action Imitation network and motor imitation in children and adolescents with autism

Wadsworth, Heather M.; Maximo, Jose O.; Lemelman, Amy; Clayton, Kacy; Sivaraman, Soumya; Deshpande, Hrishikesh; Hoef, Lawrence Ver; Kana, Rajesh K.

doi:10.1016/j.neuroscience.2016.12.001

Cited by 32 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…This finding suggests that these areas may be part of a neural mechanism linking perceptual representations of gestures to performance of these actions. There is considerable research establishing the AON in this role, functionally supporting the encoding and representation of both action observation and execution (Oberman and Ramachandran, 2007;Schippers et al, 2009;Van Overwalle and Baetens, 2009;Wadsworth et al, 2017), while LOTC's role in this capacity is just emerging (Zimmermann et al, 2018) and may warrant further investigation. No association between activity in bilateral pSTS and gesture performance was detected, which may suggest that this region is less relevant for gesture production compared to the other two areas.…”

Section: Relationships Between Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Processing and Production of Gesture in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

et al. 2020

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Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate impairments in nonverbal communication, including gesturing and imitation deficits. Reduced sensitivity to biological motion (BM) in ASD may impair processing of dynamic social cues like gestures, which in turn may impede encoding and subsequent performance of these actions. Using both an fMRI task involving observation of action gestures and a charade style paradigm assessing gesture performance, this study examined the brain-behavior relationships between neural activity during gesture processing, gesturing abilities and social symptomology in a group of children and adolescents with and without ASD. Compared to typically developing (TD) controls, participants with ASD showed atypical sensitivity to movement in right posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), a region implicated in action processing, and had poorer overall gesture performance with specific deficits in hand posture. The TD group showed associations between neural activity, gesture performance and social skills, that were weak or non-significant in the ASD group. These findings suggest that those with ASD demonstrate abnormalities in both processing and production of gestures and may reflect dysfunction in the mechanism underlying perception-action coupling resulting in atypical development of social and communicative skills.

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Section: Relationships Between Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neural Processing and Production of Gesture in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

et al. 2020

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“…The mechanism of this perception-to-action mapping has been posited in mirror neurons, a type of sensorimotor neuron 7 responsive both when a specific action is carried out and when the same action type is perceived visually or acoustically (Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2010). Neural activity attributable to mirror neurons in premotor and motor cortex is abnormally low in ASC (Bernier, Dawson, Webb, & Murias, 2007;Cattaneo et al, 2007;Dapretto et al, 2006;Honaga et al, 2010;McCleery et al, 2013;Nishitani, Avikainen, & Hari, 2004;Oberman et al, 2005;Rizzolatti & Fabbri-Destro, 2010;Theoret et al, 2005;Wadsworth et al, 2017), 8 and therefore was interpreted as support for proposals that the autistic phenotype results from the dysfunction of mirror neuron systems (the 'broken mirrors' hypothesis: Ramachandran & Oberman, 2006).…”

Section: The Neuroanatomical Correlates Of Movement Impairmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

Moseley

Pulvermüller

2018

Cortex

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“…Additionally, we also examined the underlying neural impairments associated with interpersonal synchrony performance in children with and without ASD. While there is neuroscientific literature on imitation performance that could be extended to interpersonal synchrony behaviors, it is still limited to imitation of finger motions and does not include naturalistic arm movements and face-to-face interactions [ 15 , 16 ]. Hence, the present study aimed to compare interpersonal synchrony performance as well as underlying cortical activation patterns during a naturalistic reach and clean up task in children with and without ASD.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although not consistent, fMRI studies have reported that children with ASD have atypical cortical activation during imitation tasks. When imitating hand gestures, children with ASD showed reduced activation in the right angular gyrus, precentral gyrus, and left middle cingulate gyrus [ 15 ]. During finger movement imitation, children with ASD had reduced activation over right fusiform cortex, right middle occipital gyrus, left IPL, right lingual gyrus, right middle temporal gyrus [ 55 ], as well as the cerebellum [ 16 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in cortical activation patterns during action observation, action execution, and interpersonal synchrony between children with or without autism spectrum disorder (ASD): An fNIRS pilot study

Culotta

Mueller³

et al. 2020

PLoS ONE

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Engaging in socially embedded actions such as imitation and interpersonal synchrony facilitates relationships with peers and caregivers. Imitation and interpersonal synchrony impairments of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) might contribute to their difficulties in connecting and learning from others. Previous fMRI studies investigated cortical activation in children with ASD during finger/hand movement imitation; however, we do not know whether these findings generalize to naturalistic face-to-face imitation/interpersonal synchrony tasks. Using functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), the current study assessed the cortical activation of children with and without ASD during a face-to-face interpersonal synchrony task. Fourteen children with ASD and 17 typically developing (TD) children completed three conditions: a) Watch —observed an adult clean up blocks; b) Do —cleaned up the blocks on their own; and c) Together —synchronized their block clean up actions to that of an adult. Children with ASD showed lower spatial and temporal synchrony accuracies but intact motor accuracy during the Together/interpersonal synchrony condition. In terms of cortical activation, children with ASD had hypoactivation in the middle and inferior frontal gyri (MIFG) as well as middle and superior temporal gyri (MSTG) while showing hyperactivation in the inferior parietal cortices/lobule (IPL) compared to the TD children. During the Together condition, the TD children showed bilaterally symmetrical activation whereas children with ASD showed more left-lateralized activation over MIFG and right-lateralized activation over MSTG. Additionally, using ADOS scores, in children with ASD greater social affect impairment was associated with lower activation in the left MIFG and more repetitive behavior impairment was associated with greater activation over bilateral MSTG. In children with ASD better communication performance on the VABS was associated with greater MIFG and/or MSTG activation. We identified objective neural biomarkers that could be utilized as outcome predictors or treatment response indicators in future intervention studies.

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The Action Imitation network and motor imitation in children and adolescents with autism

Cited by 32 publications

References 77 publications

Neural Processing and Production of Gesture in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Neural Processing and Production of Gesture in Children and Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder

What can autism teach us about the role of sensorimotor systems in higher cognition? New clues from studies on language, action semantics, and abstract emotional concept processing

Differences in cortical activation patterns during action observation, action execution, and interpersonal synchrony between children with or without autism spectrum disorder (ASD): An fNIRS pilot study

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