Brain Mechanisms for Processing Affective (and Nonaffective) Touch Are Atypical in Autism.

ABSTRACT: C-tactile (CT) afferents encode caress-like touch that supports social-emotional development, and stimulation of the CT system engages the insula and cortical circuitry involved in social-emotional processing. Very few neuroimaging studies have investigated the neural mechanisms of touch processing in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), who often exhibit atypical responses to touch. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we evaluated the hypothesis that children and adolescents with ASD would exhibit atypical brain responses to CT-targeted touch. Children and adolescents with ASD, relative to typically developing (TD) participants, exhibited reduced activity in response to CT-targeted (arm) versus non-CT-targeted (palm) touch in a network of brain regions known to be involved

SUBMITTER: Kaiser MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4869810 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature