Sensory and Social Subtypes of Japanese Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Studies have proposed that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be divided into several subtypes depending on their sensory features. However, consideration of social communication features is also crucial for configuring ASD subtypes, because social and sensory features are tightly interrelated. In this study, we asked Japanese individuals with ASD to answer the Short Sensory Profile (SSP) and the Social Responsiveness Scale, Second Edition (SRS-2), which measure sensory and social aspects, respectively.

The relationship between the effect of hand visibility on visuotactile temporal resolution and autistic traits.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have atypical sensory processing, particularly when sensory stimuli are delivered from different modalities with a temporal lag of subseconds. Previous studies have suggested that individuals with ASD require a longer temporal lag to judge temporal orders of successive audiovisual stimuli than neurotypical individuals; however, it remains unclear whether a lower temporal resolution in the visuotactile domain is associated with an individual's autistic traits. In addition, a previous study demonstrated that visuotactile temporal resolution degraded when the participants saw a hand image on a display.

Weakened Bayesian Calibration for Tactile Temporal Order Judgment in Individuals with Higher Autistic Traits.

Previous psychophysical studies reported a positive aftereffect in tactile temporal order judgments, which can be explained by the Bayesian estimation model ('Bayesian calibration'). We investigated the relationship between Bayesian calibration and autistic traits in participants with typical development (TD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Bayesian calibration was weakened in TD participants with high autistic traits, consistent with the 'hypo-priors' hypothesis for autistic perceptions.

People With High Autistic Traits Show Fewer Consensual Crossmodal Correspondences Between Visual Features and Tastes.

Crossmodal correspondences between visual features (e.g., color/shape) and tastes have been extensively documented in recent years.

Task-Related c-Fos Expression in the Posterior Parietal Cortex During the "Rubber Tail Task" Is Diminished in Ca-Dependent Activator Protein for Secretion 2 ()-Knockout Mice.

Rubber hand illusion (RHI), a kind of body ownership illusion, is sometimes atypical in individuals with autism spectrum disorder; however, the brain regions associated with the illusion are still unclear. We previously reported that mice responded as if their own tails were being touched when rubber tails were grasped following synchronous stroking to rubber tails and their tails (a "rubber tail illusion", RTI), which is a task based on the human RHI; furthermore, we reported that the RTI response was diminished in knockout (-KO) mice that exhibit autistic-like phenotypes. Importance of the posterior parietal cortex in the formation of illusory perception has previously been reported in human imaging studies.

Interaction between spatial neglect and attention deficit in patients with right hemisphere damage.

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) was originally regarded as a parietal syndrome, but it has become evident that USN is a disturbance in the widespread attention network. Here, we focused on an interaction between spatial neglect and non-spatial aspect of attention deficit, and aimed to establish a novel evaluation approach based on the characteristics of the spatial distribution of reaction times. We tested 174 patients with right hemisphere damage and divided them based on their prescreening scores on the Behavioral Inattention Test (BIT): (1) USN++ (n = 79: BIT<131), (2) USN+ (n = 47: BIT≥131 with history of USN), and (3) RHD (n = 48: without neglect symptom).

State anxiety modulates the effect of emotion cues on visual temporal sensitivity in autism spectrum disorder.

Atypical processing of stimulus inputs across a range of sensory modalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is widely reported. Sensory processing is known to be influenced by bodily internal states such as physiological arousal and anxiety. As a sizeable proportion of ASD reportedly have co-morbid anxiety disorders that are linked with dysregulated arousal, we investigated if face emotion arousal cues influenced visual sensory sensitivity (indexed by temporal resolution) in ASD (n = 20) compared to a matched group of typically developed individuals (TD, n = 21).

Pathological structure of visuospatial neglect: A comprehensive multivariate analysis of spatial and non-spatial aspects.

Visuospatial neglect (VSN) is a neurological syndrome of higher brain functions in which an individual fails to detect stimuli on a space that is contralateral to a hemispheric lesion. We performed a comprehensive multivariate analysis based on the principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis in patients with right hemisphere stroke and then performed a determination of different elements of VSN. PCA-based cluster analysis detected distinct aspects of VSN as follows: cluster 1: low arousal and attention state, cluster 2: exogenous neglect, cluster 3: spatial working memory (SWM) deficit.

Atypical Effects of Visual Interference on Tactile Temporal Order Judgment in Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Visual distractors interfere with tactile temporal order judgment (TOJ) at moderately short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) in typically developing participants. Presentation of a rubber hand in a forward direction to the participant's hand enhances this effect, while that in an inverted direction weakens the effect. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have atypical multisensory processing; however, effects of interferences on atypical multisensory processing in ASD remain unclear.

Autistic Communication and Imagination Sub-Traits Are Related to Audiovisual Temporal Integration in the Stream-Bounce Illusion.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by atypical social communication and restricted and repetitive behaviors; such traits are continuously distributed across nonclinical and clinical populations. Recently, relationships between ASD traits and low-level multisensory processing have been investigated, because atypical sensory reactivity has been regarded as a diagnostic criterion of ASD. Studies regarding an audiovisual illusion (the double-flash illusion) reported that social communication difficulties are related to temporal aspects of audiovisual integration.

Discrimination of standing postures between young and elderly people based on center of pressure.

Posturography is utilized to assess the influence of aging on postural control. Although this measurement is advantageous for finding group-level differences between the young and the elderly, it is unclear whether it has the potential to differentiate elderly individuals who are affected by various impacts of aging. The purpose of this study was to determine the utility of posturography to discriminate elderly individuals from young adults.

Attention-dependent switching between intrinsic-muscle and extrinsic-visual coordinates during bimanual movements.

Inter-limb coordination is achieved through multiple levels of motor control based on intrinsic-muscle and extrinsic-visual coordinates. Online visual feedback affects which of these coordinates is dominant, and visual perception is involved in the switching of motor coordination across the two hands; however, it remains unclear whether there is any role for attention in inter-limb coordination. Therefore, we evaluated the effects of attention on the dominance of intrinsic-muscle and extrinsic-visual coordinates by investigating inter-limb interference in the right or left hand during bimanual reaching movements, as induced by visual perturbations.

Decreased utilization of allocentric coordinates during reaching movement in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Despite numerous reports of abnormalities in limb motor controls in spatial orientation in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the underlying mechanisms have not been elucidated. We studied the influence of allocentric coordinates on ongoing reaching movements, which has been reported to strongly affect the reaching movements of typically developing (TD) individuals. ASD and TD participants observed a target presented randomly on one of the four corners of a frame on a screen.

When a sentence loses semantics: Selective involvement of a left anterior temporal subregion in semantic processing.

Although the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) has been associated with semantic processing, the role of this region in syntactic structure building of sentences remains a subject of debate. Functional neuroimaging studies contrasting well-formed sentences with word lists lacking syntactic structure have produced mixed results. The current functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined whether the left ATL is selectively involved in semantic processing or also plays a role in syntactic structure building by manipulating syntactic complexity and meaningfulness in a novel way.

The effect of task-irrelevant spatial contexts on 360-degree attention.

The effect of spatial contexts on attention is important for evaluating the risk of human errors and the accessibility of information in different situations. In traditional studies, this effect has been investigated using display-based and non-laboratory procedures. However, these two procedures are inadequate for measuring attention directed toward 360-degree environments and controlling exogeneous stimuli.

GABA Concentration in the Left Ventral Premotor Cortex Associates With Sensory Hyper-Responsiveness in Autism Spectrum Disorders Without Intellectual Disability.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit abnormal processing of sensory inputs from multiple modalities and higher-order cognitive/behavioral response to those inputs. Several lines of evidence suggest that altered γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain, is a central characteristic of the neurophysiology of ASD. The relationship between GABA in particular brain regions and atypical sensory processing in ASD is poorly understood.

Neural Basis of Extremely High Temporal Sensitivity: Insights From a Patient With Autism.

The human brain is sensitive to incoming sensory information across multiple time scales. Temporal scales of information represented in the brain generally constrain behavior. Despite reports of the neural correlates of millisecond timing, how the human brain processes sensory stimuli in the sub-second range (≤100 ms) and its behavioral implications are areas of active scientific inquiry.

Focused attention meditation training modifies neural activity and attention: longitudinal EEG data in non-meditators.

Focused attention meditation (FAM) is a basic meditation practice that cultivates attentional control and monitoring skills. Cross-sectional studies have highlighted high cognitive performance and discriminative neural activity in experienced meditators. However, a direct relationship between neural activity changes and improvement of attention caused by meditation training remains to be elucidated.

Perceptual effects of fast and automatic visual ensemble statistics from faces in individuals with typical development and autism spectrum conditions.

We investigated whether covert ensembles of high- (emotion), and low-level (brightness) visual information, extracted from peripheral faces (presentation/encoding:200 ms), unintentionally influences perception of a central target face stimulus in individuals typically developing (TD) and with autism spectrum condition (ASC). Graded alterations in the summary intensities of the emotion and brightness of the peripheral stimuli modulated the perceptions of the target face in both TD and ASC. In contrast, when we measured goal-directed (overt) ensemble face- emotion and brightness perception, we found that in half of ASC the overt ensemble emotion perception was impaired than TD.

Cutaneous and stick rabbit illusions in individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Prediction is the process by which future events are anticipated based on past events; in contrast, postdiction is the retrospective interpretation of past events based on latter, more recent events. The prediction and postdiction are suggested to be similar based on theoretical models. Previous studies suggest that prediction is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Altered GABA Concentration in Brain Motor Area Is Associated with the Severity of Motor Disabilities in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Several motor disabilities accompanied with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are widely known despite limited reports of underlying neural mechanisms. Gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) levels in the motor-related cortical areas modulate several motor performances in healthy participants. We hypothesized that abnormal GABA concentrations in the primary motor area (M1) and supplementary motor area (SMA) associate with different motor difficulties for ASD adolescents/adults.

Neural architecture of human language: Hierarchical structure building is independent from working memory.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we show that the neural substrate of language does not overlap with that for verbal working memory when we carefully define verbal working memory in sentence processing. Object-Subject-Verb (OSV) sentences in Japanese were contrasted with canonical Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) sentences, which had less hierarchy in linguistic structure. This contrast revealed the posterior part of Broca's area and the left posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) as the neural bases for hierarchical structure building.

Rubber tail illusion is weakened in Ca-dependent activator protein for secretion 2 (Caps2)-knockout mice.

Body ownership is a fundamental aspect of self-consciousness. Illusion of body ownership is caused by updating body representation through multisensory integration. Synchronous visuotactile stimulation of a hand and rubber hand leads to illusory changes in body ownership in humans, but this is impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Preferential attentional engagement drives attentional bias to snakes in Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) and humans (Homo sapiens).

In humans, attentional biases have been shown to negative (dangerous animals, physical threat) and positive (high caloric food, alcohol) stimuli. However, it is not clear whether these attentional biases reflect on stimulus driven, bottom up, or goal driven, top down, attentional processes. Here we show that, like humans, Japanese macaques show an attentional bias to snakes in a dot probe task (Experiment 1).

Spontaneous Discriminative Response to the Biological Motion Displays Involving a Walking Conspecific in Mice.

Recent translational studies using mice have contributed toward elucidating the neural, genetic, and molecular basis of social communication deficits. Nevertheless, many components of visual processes underlying mice sociality remain unresolved, including perception of bodily-movement. Here, we aimed to reveal the visual sensitivity of mice to information on bodily motion using biological motion displays depicted by simple geometric dots.