Brief Communication abstract


Nature Neuroscience 12, 970 - 972 (2009)
Published online: 5 July 2009 | doi:10.1038/nn.2356

Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain

Courtney C Haswell1, Jun Izawa1, Lauren R Dowell2, Stewart H Mostofsky2,3 & Reza Shadmehr1

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Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in motor control, imitation and social function. Does a dysfunction in the neural basis of representing internal models of action contribute to these problems? We measured patterns of generalization as children learned to control a novel tool and found that the autistic brain built a stronger than normal association between self-generated motor commands and proprioceptive feedback; furthermore, the greater the reliance on proprioception, the greater the child's impairments in social function and imitation.

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  1. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
  2. Kennedy Krieger Institute, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
  3. Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.

Correspondence to: Reza Shadmehr1 e-mail: shadmehr@jhu.edu



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