Investigating Mirror System (MS) Activity in Adults with ASD When Inferring Others' Intentions Using Both TMS and EEG.
Eleanor J Cole, Nick E Barraclough, Peter G Enticott
PMID 29453710WHAT IT FOUND
Magnetic pulse measures found no difference between judging intentions and judging action success.
Brain wave measures linked more autistic traits to lower right-hemisphere activity during intention judging, and left-hemisphere activity to better intention judging. This is lab evidence, not a therapy target.
Key findings
01The TMS measure of motor resonance showed no significant difference between the mentalizing and non-mentalizing tasks and no significant group differences.
02During the mentalizing task, higher autistic traits predicted lower mu suppression in the 8 to 10 Hz band at F4.
03During the mentalizing task, mu suppression in the 8 to 10 Hz band at F3 predicted mentalizing performance across all participants.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was small, especially for the TMS analysis, which included 35 participants and only 9 participants with ASD. The participants were high-functioning adults with verbal IQ scores within the normal range, so the findings may not apply to younger or lower-functioning people. Six participants in the ASD group were taking psychotropic medication, which may affect corticospinal excitability. The TMS and EEG measures did not predict each other, so they may index different aspects of mirror-system activity. The authors state that their data do not provide evidence that atypical mirror-system functioning underlies mentalizing difficulties in ASD. The study did not test a therapy or clinical communication outcome, so it cannot tell therapists whether to change treatment.
Declared interests
The Economic and Social Research Council is named as the funder. The supplied text does not include author conflict-of-interest declarations.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that action-understanding brain dysfunction causes intention-judgement problems in adults with ASD. The magnetic pulse measure was null, and the brain wave finding linked right-hemisphere activity to autistic traits but not to intention-judgement performance.