Visual Processing in Individuals with Autism
A pervasive aspect of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is hypersensitivity to sensory stimuli. These “sensory problems” cause significant disruption in the lives of those with ASD, but are nevertheless often considered secondary in importance to cognitive and social differences.
Based on our knowledge of sensory processing, we hypothesize that they are a manifestation of pervasive impairments in fundamental neural computations. We hypothesize that malfunction in these neural computations may be the “core deficit” in ASD, providing a foundation not only for sensory hypersensitivity but also for the cognitive and social differences. Understanding autism-related differences in sensory responsivity may therefore elucidate, more generally, the underlying psychological and neural differences in ASD. We are recording EEG to characterize epileptiform and hyperexcitable cortical activity and correlate these measure with diagnostic criteria for ASD.
The research is sponsored by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
You can help us in this mission by participating in our study!
If you are interested please call 650-736-2793 or 650-725-2440
or e-mail to carrighi@stanford.edu
We are looking for people who:
- Have been diagnosed with ASD
- Typical children from 6 to 17 years old
