Unraveling the developmental dynamic of visual exploration of social interactions in autism
- University of Geneva, Switzerland
- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
- Fondation Pôle Autisme, Switzerland
- Mohammed Bin Rashid University of Medicine and Health Sciences, United Arab Emirates
- Bosch Sensortec GmbH, Germany
Abstract
Atypical deployment of social gaze is present early on in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Yet, studies characterizing the developmental dynamic behind it are scarce. Here we used a data-driven method to delineate the developmental change in visual exploration of social interaction over childhood years in autism. Longitudinal eye-tracking data were acquired as children with ASD and their typically developing (TD) peers freely explored a short cartoon movie. We found divergent moment-to-moment gaze patterns in children with ASD compared to their TD peers. This divergence was particularly evident in sequences that displayed social interactions between characters and even more so in children with lower developmental and functional levels. The basic visual properties of the animated scene did not account for the enhanced divergence. Over childhood years, these differences dramatically increased to become more idiosyncratic. These findings suggest that social attention should be targeted early in clinical treatments.
Data availability
The Proximity Index method code and example data are publicly available at (https://github.com/nadakojovic/ProximityIndexMethod (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10409645) and the data and codes used to produce figures of the current paper can be accessed at https://github.com/nadakojovic/ProximityIndexPaper (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10409651).
Article and author information
Author details
Holger Franz Sperdin
Funding
National Centre of Competence in Research SYNAPSY (51NF40-185897)
- Marie Schaer
Swiss National Science Foundation (163859)
- Marie Schaer
Swiss National Science Foundation (190084)
- Marie Schaer
Swiss National Science Foundation (202235)
- Marie Schaer
Swiss National Science Foundation (212653)
- Marie Schaer
ERC Synergy fund BrainPlay - The Self-teaching Brain grant (810580)
- Daphné Bavelier
Fondation Privée des Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève (https://www.fondationhug.org
- Marie Schaer
Fondation Pôle Autisme
- Marie Schaer
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva University, Switzerland (Swissethics, protocol 12-163/Psy 12-014, referral number PB_2016-01880). All families gave written informed consent to participate.
Copyright
© 2024, Kojovic et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,002
- views
-
- 373
- downloads
-
- 3
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Unraveling the developmental dynamic of visual exploration of social interactions in autism
eLife 13:e85623.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85623
Further reading
-
- Neuroscience
Unipolar brush cells (UBCs) are excitatory interneurons in the cerebellar cortex that receive mossy fiber (MF) inputs and excite granule cells. The UBC population responds to brief burst activation of MFs with a continuum of temporal transformations, but it is not known how UBCs transform the diverse range of MF input patterns that occur in vivo. Here, we use cell-attached recordings from UBCs in acute cerebellar slices to examine responses to MF firing patterns that are based on in vivo recordings. We find that MFs evoke a continuum of responses in the UBC population, mediated by three different types of glutamate receptors that each convey a specialized component. AMPARs transmit timing information for single stimuli at up to 5 spikes/s, and for very brief bursts. A combination of mGluR2/3s (inhibitory) and mGluR1s (excitatory) mediates a continuum of delayed, and broadened responses to longer bursts, and to sustained high frequency activation. Variability in the mGluR2/3 component controls the time course of the onset of firing, and variability in the mGluR1 component controls the duration of prolonged firing. We conclude that the combination of glutamate receptor types allows each UBC to simultaneously convey different aspects of MF firing. These findings establish that UBCs are highly flexible circuit elements that provide diverse temporal transformations that are well suited to contribute to specialized processing in different regions of the cerebellar cortex.
-
- Neuroscience
We hypothesized that active outer hair cells drive cochlear fluid circulation. The hypothesis was tested by delivering the neurotoxin, kainic acid, to the intact round window of young gerbil cochleae while monitoring auditory responses in the cochlear nucleus. Sounds presented at a modest level significantly expedited kainic acid delivery. When outer-hair-cell motility was suppressed by salicylate, the facilitation effect was compromised. A low-frequency tone was more effective than broadband noise, especially for drug delivery to apical locations. Computational model simulations provided the physical basis for our observation, which incorporated solute diffusion, fluid advection, fluid–structure interaction, and outer-hair-cell motility. Active outer hair cells deformed the organ of Corti like a peristaltic tube to generate apically streaming flows along the tunnel of Corti and basally streaming flows along the scala tympani. Our measurements and simulations coherently suggest that active outer hair cells in the tail region of cochlear traveling waves drive cochlear fluid circulation.
