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2. Exploring social touch in autistic and non-autistic adults via a self-report body-painting task: The role of sex, social context and body area.

Author

Mello, Manuel, Fusaro, Martina, Aglioti, Salvatore Maria, and Minio-Paluello, Ilaria

Subjects
SELF-evaluation, ART, RESEARCH funding, TOUCH, AUTISM, SEX distribution, SOCIAL factors, SOCIAL attitudes, SOCIAL skills, ASPERGER'S syndrome, HUMAN body, INTIMACY (Psychology), FRIENDSHIP, ADULTS
Abstract

In the typically developing population, social touch experiences are influenced by several factors, including the biological sex of toucher and receiver, the body area wherein the touch is delivered and the social context in which the tactile exchange occurs. However, it is currently unexplored how social touch experiences of autistic adults are modulated by these factors. We sought to address this by utilizing a self-report body-painting task. Our main results show that autistic, compared with non-autistic, adults reported lower levels of pleasantness, erogeneity and appropriateness, specifically in intimate and friendly social contexts and in body areas typically touched in these situations. Importantly, sex played a major role in group differences. For instance, although autistic females reported, across social contexts, less pleasantness than both non-autistic females and autistic males, they experienced similar levels of appropriateness in the professional social context, usually deemed as touch-appropriate. Our findings provide new support to the hypothesis that social touch is experienced and possibly conceptualized differently by autistic compared with non-autistic adults. Moreover, by identifying the factors that influence social touch processing in autistic adults, our results might aid the development of support for autistic individuals seeking help in the spheres of social and intimate touch. What is already known about the topic? At least in neurotypical individuals, social touch represents an important channel for emotional communication associated with social bonding and pain/anxiety modulation. Autistic adults report to avoid social touch more and to have different tactile sensitivity than their non-autistic comparisons. What this paper adds? Few studies specifically investigated social touch in autistic individuals, and none of them examined the role of participants' sex, social context in which social touch occurs, and specific body areas being touched. In our study, adult participants reported how pleasant, erogenous and appropriate they would consider touches delivered by another person over their entire body in intimate (date), friendly (dance class) and professional (physiotherapy-massage session) social contexts. Autistic adults reported social touch to be less pleasant, erogenous and appropriate specifically in intimate and friendly social contexts and in body areas typically touched in these situations. Importantly, autistic females seem more at risk to experience unpleasant social touch as, although they considered it more unpleasant than non-autistic females and autistic males, they did consider it similarly appropriate in professional social contexts where touch is normed to be socially appropriate. Implications for practice, research or policy Our results might improve awareness and understanding about autistic adults' different, and often more discomforting, experience of social touch and thus help consider and respect it during everyday social interactions. Our results might also benefit future research investigating, for instance, the neural underpinnings of social touch differences in autism or aiming at developing support for autistic individuals seeking help in the diverse spheres of social touch. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2024
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23. Le tecniche di indagine cerebrale

Author

Spitoni, Grazia, Rapisarda, Attilio, and Minio-Paluello, Ilaria

Subjects
tecniche, cerebrale, neuroscienze
Published
2006

28. Face individual identity recognition: a potential endophenotype in autism

Author

Minio-Paluello, Ilaria, Porciello, Giuseppina, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, and Baron-Cohen, Simon

Subjects
Individual identity recognition, Research, Autism, Social memory, behavioral disciplines and activities, 3. Good health, Face memory, Prosopagnosia, Endophenotype, Theory of mind, mental disorders, Emotion recognition, Heterogeneity, health care economics and organizations
Abstract

Funder: Autism Research Trust, Funder: NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care East of England at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Funder: Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100001479, Funder: National Science Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008982, Funder: The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, Funder: US-IT Fulbright Commission, Background: Face individual identity recognition skill is heritable and independent of intellectual ability. Difficulties in face individual identity recognition are present in autistic individuals and their family members and are possibly linked to oxytocin polymorphisms in families with an autistic child. While it is reported that developmental prosopagnosia (i.e., impaired face identity recognition) occurs in 2–3% of the general population, no prosopagnosia prevalence estimate is available for autism. Furthermore, an autism within-group approach has not been reported towards characterizing impaired face memory and to investigate its possible links to social and communication difficulties. Methods: The present study estimated the prevalence of prosopagnosia in 80 autistic adults with no intellectual disability, investigated its cognitive characteristics and links to autism symptoms’ severity, personality traits, and mental state understanding from the eye region by using standardized tests and questionnaires. Results: More than one third of autistic participants showed prosopagnosia. Their face memory skill was not associated with their symptom’s severity, empathy, alexithymia, or general intelligence. Face identity recognition was instead linked to mental state recognition from the eye region only in autistic individuals who had prosopagnosia, and this relationship did not depend on participants’ basic face perception skills. Importantly, we found that autistic participants were not aware of their face memory skills. Limitations: We did not test an epidemiological sample, and additional work is necessary to establish whether these results generalize to the entire autism spectrum. Conclusions: Impaired face individual identity recognition meets the criteria to be a potential endophenotype in autism. In the future, testing for face memory could be used to stratify autistic individuals into genetically meaningful subgroups and be translatable to autism animal models.

29. Face individual identity recognition: a potential endophenotype in autism

Author

Minio-Paluello, Ilaria, Porciello, Giuseppina, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, and Baron-Cohen, Simon

Subjects
Individual identity recognition, Research, Autism, Social memory, behavioral disciplines and activities, 3. Good health, Face memory, Prosopagnosia, Endophenotype, Theory of mind, mental disorders, Emotion recognition, Heterogeneity, health care economics and organizations
Abstract

Funder: Autism Research Trust, Funder: NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Funder: National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care East of England at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Funder: Sidney R. Baer, Jr. Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100001479, Funder: National Science Foundation; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008982, Funder: The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center, Funder: US-IT Fulbright Commission, Background: Face individual identity recognition skill is heritable and independent of intellectual ability. Difficulties in face individual identity recognition are present in autistic individuals and their family members and are possibly linked to oxytocin polymorphisms in families with an autistic child. While it is reported that developmental prosopagnosia (i.e., impaired face identity recognition) occurs in 2–3% of the general population, no prosopagnosia prevalence estimate is available for autism. Furthermore, an autism within-group approach has not been reported towards characterizing impaired face memory and to investigate its possible links to social and communication difficulties. Methods: The present study estimated the prevalence of prosopagnosia in 80 autistic adults with no intellectual disability, investigated its cognitive characteristics and links to autism symptoms’ severity, personality traits, and mental state understanding from the eye region by using standardized tests and questionnaires. Results: More than one third of autistic participants showed prosopagnosia. Their face memory skill was not associated with their symptom’s severity, empathy, alexithymia, or general intelligence. Face identity recognition was instead linked to mental state recognition from the eye region only in autistic individuals who had prosopagnosia, and this relationship did not depend on participants’ basic face perception skills. Importantly, we found that autistic participants were not aware of their face memory skills. Limitations: We did not test an epidemiological sample, and additional work is necessary to establish whether these results generalize to the entire autism spectrum. Conclusions: Impaired face individual identity recognition meets the criteria to be a potential endophenotype in autism. In the future, testing for face memory could be used to stratify autistic individuals into genetically meaningful subgroups and be translatable to autism animal models.

30. Face individual identity recognition: a potential endophenotype in autism

Author

Minio-Paluello, Ilaria, Porciello, Guiseppina, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, and Baron-Cohen, Simon

Subjects
3. Good health
Abstract

The results leading to this publication have received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777394 for the project AIMS-2-TRIALS. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and AUTISM SPEAKS, Autistica, SFARI. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. Any views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funders.

31. Face individual identity recognition: a potential endophenotype in autism

Author

Minio-Paluello, Ilaria, Porciello, Guiseppina, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, and Baron-Cohen, Simon

Subjects
3. Good health
Abstract

The results leading to this publication have received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777394 for the project AIMS-2-TRIALS. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and AUTISM SPEAKS, Autistica, SFARI. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. Any views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funders.

32. Face individual identity recognition: a potential endophenotype in autism

Author

Minio-Paluello, Ilaria, Porciello, Giuseppina, Pascual-Leone, Alvaro, and Baron-Cohen, Simon

Subjects
Adult, Male, Adolescent, Endophenotypes, Autism, Intelligence, Social memory, behavioral disciplines and activities, Young Adult, Memory, Prevalence, Humans, Autistic Disorder, Aged, Individual identity recognition, Recognition, Psychology, Middle Aged, 3. Good health, Endophenotype, Face memory, Prosopagnosia, Theory of mind, Case-Control Studies, Female, Emotion recognition, Heterogeneity, Facial Recognition, Personality
Abstract

Background: Face individual identity recognition skill is heritable and independent of intellectual ability. It can be measured early in development, in individuals with intellectual disability and is translatable to animal models. Difficulties in face individual identity recognition are present in autistic individuals and their family members and are possibly linked to oxytocin polymorphisms in families with an autistic child. While we know that developmental prosopagnosia (i.e., impaired face identity recognition) occurs in 2-3% of the general population, no prosopagnosia prevalence estimate is available for autism. Furthermore, an autism within-group approach has not been used to characterize impaired face memory and investigate its possible links to social and communication difficulties. Methods: We estimated prevalence of prosopagnosia in 80 autistic adults with no intellectual disability, investigated its cognitive characteristics and links to autism symptoms’ severity, personality traits and mental state understanding from the eye region by using standardized tests and questionnaires. Results: More than one third of autistic participants showed prosopagnosia. Their face memory skill was not associated to their symptom’s severity, empathy, alexithymia or general intelligence. Face identity recognition was instead linked to mental state recognition only in autistic individuals who had prosopagnosia, and this relationship did not depend on participants’ basic face perception skills. Importantly, we found that autistic participants were not aware of their face memory skills. Conclusions: Impaired facial individual identity recognition is found in a large subgroup of individuals on the autism spectrum and is associated with difficulties in mental state understanding from the eye region. Testing for face memory could, in the future, potentially be used to stratify autistic individuals in genetically meaningful and oxytocinrelevant subgroups and be translatable to autism animal models.

33. Stimulus-driven modulation of motor-evoked potentials during observation of others' pain.

Author

Avenanti A, Minio-Paluello I, Bufalari I, and Aglioti SM

Subjects
Adult, Attention, Brain Mapping, Female, Functional Laterality, Humans, Male, Needles, Pain Measurement, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Video Recording, Wounds, Penetrating, Empathy, Evoked Potentials, Motor physiology, Pain physiopathology
Abstract

Empathy may allow interindividual sharing not only of emotions (e.g., joy, sadness, disgust) but also of sensations (e.g., touch, itching, pain). Although empathy for pain may rely upon both sensory and affective components of the pain experience, neuroimaging studies indicate that only the affective component of the pain matrix is involved in empathy for pain. By using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), we highlighted the sensorimotor side of empathy for pain by showing a clear motor inhibition during the mere observation of needles penetrating body parts of a human model. Here, we explored stimulus-specific and instruction-specific influences on this inhibition by manipulating task instructions (request to adopt first- or third-person perspective vs. passive observation) and painfulness of the experimental stimuli (presentation of videos of needles deeply penetrating or simply pinpricking a hand). We found a significant reduction in amplitudes of motor-evoked potentials (MEPs) specific to the muscle the subjects observed being penetrated that correlated with the intensity of the pain attributed to the model. Crucially, this motor inhibition was present during observation of penetrating but not of pinpricking needles. Moreover, no MEPs modulation contingent upon different task instructions was found. Results suggest that the motor inhibition elicited by the observation of "flesh and bone" pain stimuli is more stimulus-driven than instruction-driven.

Published
2006
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