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. 2017 Aug 15;7(1):8259.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-08730-3.

Autonomic versus perceptual accounts for tactile hypersensitivity in autism spectrum disorder

Hiroshi Fukuyama  1   2 , Shin-Ichiro Kumagaya  3 , Kosuke Asada  3 , Satsuki Ayaya  3 , Masaharu Kato  4
Affiliations

Autonomic versus perceptual accounts for tactile hypersensitivity in autism spectrum disorder

Hiroshi Fukuyama et al. Sci Rep. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Tactile atypicality in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has harmful effects on their everyday lives including social interactions. However, whether tactile atypicality in ASD reflects perceptual and/or autonomic processes is unknown. Here, we show that adults with ASD have hypersensitivity to tactile stimuli in the autonomic but not perceptual domain. In particular, adults with ASD showed a greater skin conductance response (SCR) to tactile stimuli compared to typically developing (TD) adults, despite an absence of differences in subjective responses. Furthermore, the level of the SCR was correlated with sensory sensitivity in daily living. By contrast, in perceptual discriminative tasks that psychophysically measured thresholds to tactile stimuli, no differences were found between the ASD and TD groups. These results favor the hypothesis that atypical autonomic processing underlies tactile hypersensitivity in ASD.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean amount of change in the SCR to electrical stimuli across groups as a function of stimulus intensity. Error bars show SD. **p < 0.01.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The subjective values for each perception across groups as a function of stimulus intensity. Error bars show SD. **p < 0.01.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean of the distance of the thresholds for two point discrimination across groups as a function of body site. Error bars show SD. **p < 0.01.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Mean of the force of the thresholds for touch detection to light touch (monofilament stimuli) across groups as a function of body sites. Error bars show SD. **p < 0.01.
Figure 5
Figure 5
An example of the psychometric function of an ASD participant in the touch comparison task. “o”s show the fractions of the participant’s strong response as a function of the forces of the comparison stimuli when compared with the standard stimulus (1.4 g). “▴” shows the point on the curve at which the percentage of strong response was 50%. The slope (derivative) of the curve was used as the dependent variable.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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