{"id":6643,"date":"2012-09-19T11:54:06","date_gmt":"2012-09-19T15:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/?p=6643"},"modified":"2012-09-21T10:57:44","modified_gmt":"2012-09-21T14:57:44","slug":"study-suggests-autism-symptoms-could-arise-from-unreliable-neural-responses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/2012\/09\/study-suggests-autism-symptoms-could-arise-from-unreliable-neural-responses\/","title":{"rendered":"Study suggests autism symptoms could arise from unreliable neural responses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Neuron.jpg\" alt=\"Neuron\" \/>From the Cell Press press release via EurekAlert!:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Diverse symptoms associated with autism could be explained by unreliable activity of neurons in the brain in response to basic, nonsocial sensory information<\/strong>, according to a study published by Cell Press on September 19th in the journal <em>Neuron<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The new findings suggest that <strong>autism is a disorder of general neural processing<\/strong> and could potentially provide an explanation for the origins of a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Within the autism research community, most researchers are looking for either a dysfunctional brain region or inadequate connections between brain regions,&#8221; says lead study author Ilan Dinstein of Carnegie Mellon University. &#8220;<strong>We&#8217;re taking a different approach and thinking about how a general characteristic of the brain could be different in autism\u2014and how that might lead to behavioral changes<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Autism is a developmental disorder marked by social deficits, communication problems, and repetitive behaviors. <strong>Two previous studies suggested that the neural responses of individuals with autism are more variable than those of control subjects during visual and motor tasks<\/strong>. Building on this past evidence, Dinstein and his collaborators have now shown that multiple sensory systems within these individuals show noisy responses, suggesting that widespread behavioral abnormalities could arise from a basic dysfunction in neural processing that emerges during development.<\/p>\n<p>In the study, adults with autism participated in functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments in which their brain activity was measured under three different conditions: while they watched moving dots on a screen, listened to tone beeps, and felt air puffs on their hands. <strong>The neural responses to all three types of sensory information were less reliable across trials in individuals with autism than in control subjects<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The findings suggest that autism could result from fundamental defects in general neural processing rather than a collection of independent problems that affect different brain regions. &#8220;Unreliable neural activity is a general property that could have a profound impact on the function of many brain systems and could underlie a range of cognitive and social abnormalities,&#8221; says study author Marlene Behrmann of Carnegie Mellon University. &#8220;So <strong>we think that this problem could play a role not only in autism, but also potentially in other disorders such as epilepsy and schizophrenia<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Cell Press press release via EurekAlert!: Diverse symptoms associated with autism could be explained by unreliable activity of neurons in the brain in response to basic, nonsocial sensory information, according to a study published by Cell Press on September 19th in the journal Neuron. The new findings suggest that autism is a disorder&hellip;&nbsp;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10,6],"tags":[71,72,42],"class_list":["post-6643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emotions","category-health","category-neuroscience","tag-asd","tag-autism","tag-brain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6643"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6722,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6643\/revisions\/6722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}