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Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity
Perceptual anomalies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been attributed to an imbalance in weighting incoming sensory evidence with prior knowledge when interpreting sensory information. Here, we show that sensory encoding and how it adapts to changing stimulus statistics during...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8143398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33979326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001215 |
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author | Noel, Jean-Paul Zhang, Ling-Qi Stocker, Alan A. Angelaki, Dora E. |
author_facet | Noel, Jean-Paul Zhang, Ling-Qi Stocker, Alan A. Angelaki, Dora E. |
author_sort | Noel, Jean-Paul |
collection | PubMed |
description | Perceptual anomalies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been attributed to an imbalance in weighting incoming sensory evidence with prior knowledge when interpreting sensory information. Here, we show that sensory encoding and how it adapts to changing stimulus statistics during feedback also characteristically differs between neurotypical and ASD groups. In a visual orientation estimation task, we extracted the accuracy of sensory encoding from psychophysical data by using an information theoretic measure. Initially, sensory representations in both groups reflected the statistics of visual orientations in natural scenes, but encoding capacity was overall lower in the ASD group. Exposure to an artificial (i.e., uniform) distribution of visual orientations coupled with performance feedback altered the sensory representations of the neurotypical group toward the novel experimental statistics, while also increasing their total encoding capacity. In contrast, neither total encoding capacity nor its allocation significantly changed in the ASD group. Across both groups, the degree of adaptation was correlated with participants’ initial encoding capacity. These findings highlight substantial deficits in sensory encoding—independent from and potentially in addition to deficits in decoding—in individuals with ASD. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8143398 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81433982021-06-07 Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity Noel, Jean-Paul Zhang, Ling-Qi Stocker, Alan A. Angelaki, Dora E. PLoS Biol Research Article Perceptual anomalies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been attributed to an imbalance in weighting incoming sensory evidence with prior knowledge when interpreting sensory information. Here, we show that sensory encoding and how it adapts to changing stimulus statistics during feedback also characteristically differs between neurotypical and ASD groups. In a visual orientation estimation task, we extracted the accuracy of sensory encoding from psychophysical data by using an information theoretic measure. Initially, sensory representations in both groups reflected the statistics of visual orientations in natural scenes, but encoding capacity was overall lower in the ASD group. Exposure to an artificial (i.e., uniform) distribution of visual orientations coupled with performance feedback altered the sensory representations of the neurotypical group toward the novel experimental statistics, while also increasing their total encoding capacity. In contrast, neither total encoding capacity nor its allocation significantly changed in the ASD group. Across both groups, the degree of adaptation was correlated with participants’ initial encoding capacity. These findings highlight substantial deficits in sensory encoding—independent from and potentially in addition to deficits in decoding—in individuals with ASD. Public Library of Science 2021-05-12 /pmc/articles/PMC8143398/ /pubmed/33979326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001215 Text en © 2021 Noel et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Noel, Jean-Paul Zhang, Ling-Qi Stocker, Alan A. Angelaki, Dora E. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title | Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title_full | Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title_fullStr | Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title_full_unstemmed | Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title_short | Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
title_sort | individuals with autism spectrum disorder have altered visual encoding capacity |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8143398/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33979326 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001215 |
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