Sensory Integration Problems in Autism

May 24, 2009

Manuel F. Casanova, M.D.
Temple Grandin

• In an interview with Temple

Grandin (2008) when asked
where the federal government
should spend their research
money, she answered: “…I would
spend it on…really figuring out
what causes all the sensory
problems. I realize it’s not the
core deficit in autism, but it
something that makes it extremely
difficult for persons with autism
to function.”
 Properties of Systems

A system has: 1) properties that are emergent, if not

intrinsically found in any of its parts, 2) phase
transitions; the capacity to change from one defined state
to another at a critical juncture, and 3) a high degree of
internal interdependence.
Orientation Preference of Columns

Proposed emergent properties: Thresholding,

amplification, derivative functions, feature
convergence, distribution functions,
coincidence detection, pattern generation, etc.
Mountcastle, 1998.
Minicolumns in Autism and Controls

Casanova et al., 2002

Gray Level Index Overlay

Casanova, 2007, in press

Rett Syndrome
Minicolumns in Autism
Shower Curtain of Inhibition
Minicolumnar activity patterns generated by Favorov and Kelly
(1994) in response to spatially defined patterns in a shape of
letters H and U.
Predictability: Quantitative Sensory
Testing in Autism
←Spatial localization under two
conditions of adapting stimulus
duration.

Radial histogram of SI cortical →

activity (Squirrel monkeys, n=5).
Cortical activity measured as light
absorbance.
Minicolumnar activity patterns generated by Favorov and Kelly
(1994) in response to spatially defined patterns in a shape of
letters H and U.
Inhibitory Deficit in Autism

Casanova, 2006
Information (Neuronal Activity) and Background
 The Noisy Brain: Part 1
• 1) “What researchers found was that in fact stimulus overload
is devastating to the brain’s- to the self’s- capacity to maintain
itself. Entirely normal people who are severely overloaded,
especially by unpredictable and uncontrollable stimuli, can
show impaired functioning, raised physiological stress,
internal chaos. Impulsive actions, and a “lower level of
adaptation: to life’s challenges.”

• 2) “Because research shows that prolonged states of sensory

overload (or noise) are actually traumatizing, we can conclude
that patients suffering from severe mental disorders are
actually being traumatized by their own brains.”

Ratey JJ. Shadow Syndromes, page 29, 1997

 The Noisy Brain: Part 2
• 1) “Noise affects this top level, causing a person afflicted to fall
back to a more primitive, “lower” level of brain functioning that
corresponds to the social strategies of the adolescent or child.
(Or lower still…where we respond reflexively instead of
thoughtfully.”

• 2) “Finally, beyond both of these difficulties, intense

physiological arousal also impairs reasoning ability, a
phenomenon psychiatrists describe as becoming concrete. Once
we have become concrete, we take things at face value; we are
no longer responding to the subtle clues and subtext of social
interactions…But what happens when people become concrete is
that they have no way of gauging the depth, the possible
subtexts, of any particular exchange.”
Ratey JJ. Shadow Syndromes, page 29, 1997
Inhibitory Surround of Minicolumns
 Faraday’s law

Any change in the magnetic environment

of a conductor will cause a voltage to be
induced in that conductor.
Precise Targeting of Specific Cortical
Regions: Frameless Stereotaxy

Brainsight-Rogue Research, Inc

Diagnostic Characterization of Neural Circuitry: Modulation of
Activity in a Distributed Network

Valero-Cabre et al., Exp Brain Res 2005, 2006

Gamma Frequencies
Induced Gamma Frequency Oscillations