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Visual perception: a window into the autistic brain
Individuals with autism report exceptionally quick and accurate perception of small details in the visual environment, colloquially “seeing the trees, but not the forest”. How does altered perceptual processing arise in the autistic brain? And how might it relate to the litany of higher-order symptoms associated with the condition?
Today, I will describe our recent work probing the neural underpinnings of sensory symptoms in autism. Using a combination of neuroimaging (Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and fMRI) and psychophysical techniques, we have discovered a series of robust and replicated differences in autistic visual behavior. These findings predict higher-order autistic symptoms (ADOS scores), and are now twice-replicated (Total N = 60 ASD, and 60 age- and IQ-matched Controls). Excitingly, this approach has recently produced the first link between a specific neurotransmitter in the brain (GABA) and autistic symptoms in human behavior -- a concrete step towards closing the loop between circuitry-level hypotheses of autism and symptoms people experience in real life.