Atypical neural self-representation in autism

Abstract

The 'self' is a complex multidimensional construct deeply embedded and in many ways defined by our relations with the social world. Individuals with autism are impaired in both self-referential and other-referential social cognitive processing. Atypical neural representation of the self may be a key to understanding the nature of such impairments. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging we scanned adult males with an autism spectrum condition and age and IQ-matched neurotypical males while they made reflective mentalizing or physical judgements about themselves or the British Queen. Neurotypical individuals preferentially recruit the middle cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex in response to self compared with other-referential processing. In autism, ventromedial prefrontal cortex responded equally to self and other, while middle cingulate cortex responded more to other-mentalizing than self-mentalizing. These atypical responses occur only in areas where self-information is preferentially processed and does not affect areas that preferentially respond to other-referential information. In autism, atypical neural self-representation was also apparent via reduced functional connectivity between ventromedial prefrontal cortex and areas associated with lower level embodied representations, such as ventral premotor and somatosensory cortex. Furthermore, the magnitude of neural self-other distinction in ventromedial prefrontal cortex was strongly related to the magnitude of early childhood social impairments in autism. Individuals whose ventromedial prefrontal cortex made the largest distinction between mentalizing about self and other were least socially impaired in early childhood, while those whose ventromedial prefrontal cortex made little to no distinction between mentalizing about self and other were the most socially impaired in early childhood. These observations reveal that the atypical organization of neural circuitry preferentially coding for self-information is a key mechanism at the heart of both self-referential and social impairments in autism.

Spatial Transformations of Bodies and Objects in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder

“…Previous studies have shown that people with autism struggle when making selfreferential judgements (Frith and de Vignemont 2005;Lombardo et al 2010), which has been related to an inability to properly distinguish between the self and others. The ability to perform the egocentric task required the participant to use the self as a reference point for performing a spatial transformation.…”

Functional and structural brain differences associated with mirror-touch synaesthesia

“…Benoit, Gilbert, Volle, & Burgess, 2010;Northoff et al, 2006;Sugiura et al, 2012) and is thought to contribute to atypical selfrepresentations in a variety of groups (e.g. see Lombardo et al, 2010;Wang, Metzak, & Woodward, 2011). While these studies tend to implicate more ventral aspects of the mPFC to selfrepresentations, prior functional neuroimaging work has indicated that the dorsal mPFC plays an important role in processing self-other discrepancy (Tamir & Mitchell, 2010).…”

Mirror-touch synaesthesia: Difficulties inhibiting the other

“…There is accumulating evidence of these regions' involvement in the control of self-other representations (e.g. Brass et al, 2009;Lombardo et al, 2010;Santiesteban et al, 2012;Spengler et al, 2010;van Overwalle, 2009). For example, Santiesteban et al, (2012) found that excitatory stimulation of TPJ showed enhanced ability to distinguish between self and other during the imitation inhibition and visual perspective taking tasks.…”