Neural Correlates of Reflection on Present and Past Selves in Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Hanna B Cygan, Artur Marchewka, Ilona Kotlewska and 1 others
PMID 29869764WHAT IT FOUND
Men with ASD assigned fewer positive personality words to their past selves than matched controls, and showed stronger brain activity during past-self reflection.
Present-self and close-other judgments looked similar. This is a small lab study, not evidence of a treatment effect.
Key findings
01The control group assigned more positive past-self adjectives than the ASD group (F 1,28 = 4.462; P = 0.044); no significant group differences were found for present-self or close-other.
02For the past-self condition, individuals with ASD showed stronger brain activity than controls in right insula, right superior temporal gyrus, right temporoparietal junction, posterior cingulate/cuneus, left middle temporal/superior temporal gyrus, and left posterior superior temporal gyrus/temporoparietal junction.
03No cortical regions showed significantly stronger activity in controls than in the ASD group for the analyzed conditions.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The sample was only 15 males with ASD and 15 matched controls, and the authors say the results need larger groups. It included only high-functioning adult males, so it does not tell us about all individuals with ASD, irrespective of sex, or about low-functioning persons. The groups were matched on IQ, but non-verbal IQ differed, so the ASD-control difference may not be independent of that cognitive difference. It measured brain activity while people judged words about themselves; it did not test any therapy. The analysis used only yes responses, so it did not examine how people rejected traits or answered no.
Declared interests
The paper names Narodowe Centrum Nauki as funder; no other conflict statement is included in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that this shows a treatment effect or that people with ASD have a general self-concept deficit. It compared 15 high-functioning adult males with controls on a laboratory adjective task; it did not test treatment, and the authors say the small sample requires caution.