The temporal dynamics of coherent motion processing in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence for a deficit in the dorsal pathway

Stronger Neural Modulation by Visual Motion Intensity in Autism Spectrum Disorders

“…Only few fMRI or M/EEG studies systematically varied dynamic visual stimuli in a motion coherence task and compared ASD to control participants [ 8 , 10 , 60 ]. Similar to the present study, Brieber et al [ 8 ] performed a regression analysis of the BOLD signal in relation to motion coherence.…”

“…The authors did not find a significant modulation neither in area hMT/V5 nor in the whole-brain analysis, although modulations by motion coherence have previously been shown in area hMT/V5 in fMRI studies with typically developed individuals [ 45 , 56 ]. Nevertheless, using analyses of variance, these studies showed a main effect of motion coherence in bilateral hMT/V5 [ 8 , 60 , 61 ] and on the amplitude and latency of the P400 ERP-component at posterior sites [ 10 ]. In line with our results, the most recent study by Robertson et al [ 61 ] found a sharper rise of BOLD activity in hMT/V5 with motion coherence in ASD, which might reflect a disturbance in local neural processing.…”

“…Currently, empirical results on this task are highly inconsistent. Individuals with ASD performed either worse (e.g., [ 4 – 6 ]) or similar (e.g., [ 7 – 10 ]) compared to healthy controls. Moreover, in a similar task with gratings, persons with ASD were better at discriminating motion direction than a control group [ 11 ].…”

“…They found a delay in the peak of the signal component that reflected magnocellular activity. Greimel et al [ 10 ] reported the amplitude of the N200 EEG-component, which has previously been implicated in dorsal pathway processing, as being reduced in ASD. Although both studies interpreted their findings as evidence for a dorsal stream deficiency in ASD, they did not systematically investigate a modulation of neural activity by motion coherence.…”

Temporal processing as a source of altered visual perception in high autistic tendency

“…While early psychophysical studies found raised motion coherence thresholds in those with ASD (Milne et al, 2002;Spencer et al, 2000), the literature is now more divided. Of the 18 articles investigating motion coherence thresholds in ASD and the broader phenotype, published from 2000 to 2014, 9 found significantly raised thresholds (Annaz et al, 2010;Atkinson, 2009;Milne et al, 2002;Pellicano et al, 2005;Robertson et al, 2012Robertson et al, , 2014Spencer et al, 2000;Spencer and O'Brien, 2006;Tsermentseli et al, 2008), 4 found significant interactions between autism and motion task parameters (such as dot lifetime) (Jackson et al, 2013;Manning et al, 2013;Robertson, et al, 2012;Sutherland and Crewther, 2010) while 5 found no significance (de Jonge et al, 2007;Del Viva et al, 2006;Greimel et al, 2013;Jones et al, 2011;Milne et al, 2006). The direct interpretation of motion coherence perception in terms of magnocellular function has been complicated because of a lack of attention to psychophysical methodology and parametric targeting (reviewed, Kaiser and Shiffrar, 2009;Simmons et al, 2009).…”