New approaches to investigating social gestures in autism spectrum disorder

TR Number

Date

2012-05-24

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

BMC

Abstract

The combination of economic games and human neuroimaging presents the possibility of using economic probes to identify biomarkers for quantitative features of healthy and diseased cognition. These probes span a range of important cognitive functions, but one new use is in the domain of reciprocating social exchange with other humans - a capacity perturbed in a number of psychopathologies. We summarize the use of a reciprocating exchange game to elicit neural and behavioral signatures for subjects diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Furthermore, we outline early efforts to capture features of social exchange in computational models and use these to identify quantitative behavioral differences between subjects with ASD and matched controls. Lastly, we summarize a number of subsequent studies inspired by the modeling results, which suggest new neural and behavioral signatures that could be used to characterize subtle deficits in information processing during interactions with other humans.

Description

Keywords

autism spectrum disorder, social exchange, reciprocation, game theory, computational models, functional magnetic resonance imaging, biomarker

Citation

Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. 2012 May 24;4(1):14