Shadmehr autism work featured in Nature Neuroscience

An article, “Representation of internal models of action in the autistic brain,” summarizing work by Reza Shadmehr, members of his lab and colleagues, was published in the August 2009 issue of Nature Neuroscience.

The abstract states: “Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in motor control, imitation and social function. Does a dysfunction in the neural basis of representing internal models of action contribute to these problems? We measured patterns of generalization as children

learned to control a novel tool and found that the autistic brain built a stronger than normal association between self-generated motor commands and proprioceptive feedback; furthermore, the greater the reliance on proprioception, the greater the child’s impairments in social function and imitation.”