Why Autistic People Recognize Patterns, Visual Stimuli

For the first time ever, scientists have now put together a model of the autistic brain, which reveals the changes that allow the autistic brain to have the abilities it does. The model combines well over 15 years of research into this field.

For years, experts have been wondering about how is it that people suffering from autism have the amazing capacity to perceive visual objects in a way no one else can. Sufferers are also able to distinguish and recognize patterns where other people see only randomness.

For this experiment, experts analyzed the data obtained by no less than 26 separate, brain-imaging studies. Together, the past studies analyzed some 357 autistic children, and 370 healthy controls.

One of the main ideas in this field of research today is that the brains of autistic patients tend to allocate more resources to regions of the cortex handling identification, classification and video detection.

According to this line of thought, the disease is therefore a consequence of the fact that insufficient mental resources remain available for allocation to neural centers and pathways that control thoughts, actions, speech and so on,.

“Through this meta-analysis, we were able to observe that autistics exhibit more activity in the temporal and occipital regions and less activity in the frontal cortex than non-autistics,” says scientist Fabienne Samson, PhD.

“The identified temporal and occipital regions are typically involved in perceiving and recognizing patterns and objects,” adds the expert, who was the first author of the new study.

“The reported frontal areas subserve higher cognitive functions such as decision-making, cognitive control, planning and execution,” Samson believes. The expert is based at the University of Montreal, in Canada, PsychCentral reports.

“This stronger engagement of the visual processing brain areas in autism is consistent with the well-documented enhanced visuo-spatial abilities in this population,” the investigator adds.

The new study goes a long way towards explaining why autistic individuals can perform a variety of higher-level tasks, that cannot be completed by the average human brain. Perceptual processes and data-recording pathways in the brain are highly-active in autistic patients.

“The stronger engagement of the visual system, whatever the task, represents the first physiological confirmation that enhanced perceptual processing is a core feature of neural organization in this population,” Samson says.

With the new data, the team hopes to be able to achieve a better understanding of the way in which the autistic brain handles processes such as perception, learning, memory and reasoning.

This could in turn lead to the development of new therapies for this condition.