Brain correlates of declarative memory atypicalities in autism: a systematic review of functional neuroimaging findings.
Pierre Desaunay, Bérengère Guillery, Edgar Moussaoui and 3 others
PMID 36627713WHAT IT FOUND
Brain scans show autistic people often use different neural routes for memory, relying more on posterior and left-hemisphere areas than frontal ones.
This explains why they may struggle with complex visual or social memory tasks while preserving verbal memory, suggesting therapy should leverage verbal supports.
Key findings
01Autistic individuals show reduced prefrontal activation during working memory tasks, which is sometimes compensated by enhanced activation in posterior sensory areas, allowing for similar behavioral performance.
02For episodic long-term memory, hippocampal activity is preserved or increased in autistic individuals, but connectivity between the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex is reduced, suggesting a reliance on detailed relational processing over context-guided encoding.
03Memory difficulties are more pronounced for visuospatial and face stimuli, linked to reduced integration between ventral and dorsal visual streams, whereas verbal memory relies on relatively preserved left-hemisphere connectivity.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Many included studies had small sample sizes, which may limit the robustness of brain imaging results. There was significant heterogeneity in participant characteristics, including age, IQ, and diagnostic criteria, which can influence memory performance and brain activation patterns. Most studies focused on recognition tasks, which autistic individuals often perform well on, while free recall tasks, where difficulties are more common, were barely explored. The review could not perform a quantitative meta-analysis due to variability in methods and outcomes. No studies included individuals with autism and concurrent language impairment, limiting generalizability to that subgroup.
Declared interests
The authors declared no competing interests.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret brain differences as deficits that always lead to poor performance. Many studies showed similar behavioral outcomes despite atypical brain activation, suggesting compensatory mechanisms are effective. Focus on the specific types of memory tasks where difficulties arise (visuospatial, complex social) rather than assuming global memory impairment.