Brief report: altered horizontal binding of single dots to coherent motion in autism.
Individuals with autism often show a fragmented way of perceiving their environment, suggesting a disorder of information integration, possibly due to disrupted communication between brain areas. We investigated thirteen individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) and thirteen healthy controls using the metastable motion quartet, a stimulus consisting of two dots alternately presented at four locations of a hypothetical square, thereby inducing an apparent motion percept. This percept is vertical or horizontal, the latter requiring binding of motion signals across cerebral hemispheres. Decreasing the horizontal distance between dots could facilitate horizontal percepts. We found evidence for altered horizontal binding in HFA: Individuals with HFA needed stronger facilitation to experience horizontal motion. These data are interpreted in light of reduced cross-hemispheric communication.
David
Nicole
N
Department of Neurophysiology and Pathophysiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistraße 52, Hamburg, Germany. ndavid@uke.de
Rose
Michael
M
Schneider
Till R
TR
Vogeley
Kai
K
Engel
Andreas K
AK
D000328:Adult; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric