Wednesday 18 March 2009 | 16:00 - 17:00Location: Doelenzaal, Singel 425, Amsterdam
prof. dr. Chantal Kemner
Professor in Biological Developmental Psychology, Utrecht University
From Neuronal Connection to Social Interaction: Perceptual Integration in the Autistic Brain
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, characterized by a wide variety of symptoms, including problems in social interaction, verbal and non-verbal language and bizarre responses to the environment. Current models on autism mostly assume impaired functioning of cortical regions dedicated to the processing of specific kinds of information, such as face processing. However, there is increasing interest in the ability of subjects with autism to integrate information from different brain areas. This interest is partly based on the clinical observations and neuropsychological test results showing that subjects with autism are preoccupied with details and show diminished part-whole integration. Integration of the output of different processing modules is a crucial factor in obtaining the whole input pattern. In the visual modality, animal studies have shown the important role of horizontal and feedbackward neuronal connections with respect to stimulus integration. The results from several studies that specifically test the functioning of these recurrent processes in autism will be shown.
In addition, it is unlikely that abnormalities in integrational capacity in autism are limited to the visual modality. For instance, it has often been reported that subjects with autism are worse than normal subjects in recognizing emotions. Integration between modalities is important in emotion recognition, since concurrent face and voice expression displays have distinct impact on recognition of each other. In addition to studies in the visual modality, the results of several studies on multimodal integration in autism will be discussed.