Lawrie S. McKay

Vision in autism spectrum disorders

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are developmental disorders which are thought primarily to affect social functioning. However, there is now a growing body of evidence that unusual sensory processing is at least a concomitant and possibly the cause of many of the behavioural signs and symptoms of ASD. A comprehensive and critical review of the phenomenological, empirical, neuroscientific and theoretical literature pertaining to visual processing in ASD is presented, along with a brief justification of a new theory which may help to explain some of the data, and link it with other current hypotheses about the genetic and neural aetiologies of this enigmatic condition.

Empirical evaluation of the uncanny valley hypothesis fails to confirm the predicted effect of motion

The uncanny valley hypothesis states that the acceptability of an artificial character will not increase linearly in relation to its likeness to human form. Instead, after an initial rise in acceptability there will be a pronounced decrease when the character is similar, but not identical to human form (Mori, 1970/2012). Moreover, it has been claimed but never directly tested that movement would accentuate this dip and make moving characters less acceptable. We used a number of full-body animated computer characters along with a parametrically defined motion set to examine the effect of motion quality on the uncanny valley. We found that improving the motion quality systematically improved the acceptability of the characters. In particular, the character classified in the deepest location of the uncanny valley became more acceptable when it was animated. Our results showed that although an uncanny valley was found for static characters, the deepening of the valley with motion, originally predicted by Mori (1970/2012), was not obtained.

Do distinct atypical cortical networks process biological motion information in adults with autism spectrum disorders.

Whether people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have a specific deficit when processing biological motion has been a topic of much debate. We used psychophysical methods to determine individual behavioural thresholds in a point-light direction discrimination paradigm for a small but carefully matched groups of adults (N=10 per group) with and without ASDs. These thresholds were used to derive individual stimulus levels in an identical fMRI task, with the purpose of equalising task performance across all participants whilst inside the scanner. The results of this investigation show that despite comparable behavioural performance both inside and outside the scanner, the group with ASDs shows a different pattern of BOLD activation from the TD group in response to the same stimulus levels. Furthermore, connectivity analysis suggests that the main differences between the groups are that the TD group utilise a unitary network with information passing from temporal to parietal regions, whilst the ASD group utilise two distinct networks; one utilising motion sensitive areas and another utilising form selective areas. Furthermore, a temporal-parietal link that is present in the TD group is missing in the ASD group. We tentatively propose that these differences may occur due to early dysfunctional connectivity in the brains of people with ASDs, which to some extent is compensated for by rewiring in high functioning adults.

Contribution of configural information in a direction discrimination task: Evidence using a novel masking paradigm

Understanding how structure and motion information contribute to the perception of biological motion is often studied with masking techniques. Current techniques in masking point-light walkers typically rely on adding surrounding masking dots or altering phase relations between joints. Here, we demonstrate the use of novel stimuli that make it possible to determine the noise level at which the local motion cues mask the opposing configural cues without changing the number of overall points in the display. Results show improved direction discrimination when configural cues are present compared to when the identical local motion signals are present but lack configural information.

How to Make Social Neuroscience Social

Social neuroscience has had a boost over the last two decades. There have been a number of dominant themes in the course of this research, two of which are (a) the identification of systems involved in attributing beliefs, true or false, to others (e.g., Amodio & Frith, 2006; Ochsner et al., 2004; Saxe, Carey, & Kanwisher, 2004) and (b) the discovery that brain regions involved in our own actions, emotions, and sensations are recruited while we witness those of others (e.g., Iacoboni, 2009; Keysers & Gazzola, 2006; Keysers & Gazzola, 2009; Rizzolatti & Craighero, 2004). As Zaki and Ochsner (this issue) correctly conclude, the lion’s share of this research has focused on characterizing the cognitive and neural processes perceivers engage when encountering other minds. This approach has two conceptual limitations. First, it typically ignores whether the engagement of these processes leads to accurate inferences about those minds. Second, it is not social in the strong sense, as experiments typically only measured the brain activity and social perception of one isolated individual (the observer) while ignoring the relationship between that individual’s brain activity and perception and those of the target or other individuals. In their target article, Zaki and Ochsner (this issue) advocate a refreshingly new perspective. They argue that the goal of mind perception is (a) to accurately perceive what goes on in others and (b) to ultimately help us interact better with others and be happier. Accordingly, one should ask not only what brain regions are recruited during mind perception, but also which of them lead to an accurate perception of what is on the mind of others and, to a lesser extent, which of them promote social functioning and happiness. Surprisingly, except for Zaki and Ochsner’s own work, there is indeed very little empirical work addressing these utilitarian questions. In the field of social neuroscience, it is rare to find publications that propose profoundly novel approaches to the study of the social brain. We think that this is one of those rare articles that inspire us to look at the entire enterprise of social neuroscience from a novel angle. In what follows, we discuss four issues inspired by the target article that we hope extend and refine the ideas that Zaki and Ochsner have seeded. First, we argue that systematically inaccurate mind perception can be highly instructive about how people understand the minds of others. Second, we offer some examples where experience sharing is perhaps a more useful resource than Zaki and Ochsner presume. Third, we look at some limitations of measuring accuracy based on the reports of targets and observers, paying particular attention to “insight.” Finally, and most important, we look at three alternative approaches that are conceptually different but related to the accuracy research of Zaki and Ochsner. All of these issues help to make social neuroscience social again, by directly studying the relationship between multiple individuals—be it by comparing the brain activity of multiple individuals or by comparing brain activity with the quality of the individuals’ social relationships.

Corrigendum to "Action expertise reduces brain activity for audiovisual matching actions An fMRI study with expert drummers" [NeuroImage 56/3 (2011) 1480-1492]

a Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland, UK b Department of Media Technology, Aalborg University Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark c Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NIN), Amsterdam, The Netherlands d Department of Art and Industrial Design, IUAV University of Venice, Venice, Italy e Department of Music, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway f Department of Information Engineering, University of Padua, Padua, Italy g Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA

Investigating the Action Understanding Circuit using Novel Point-Light Stimuli

Introduction: A number of regions have been implicated in processing biological motion, most notably the STS, premotor areas and the inferior parietal and superior parietal cortices [1,2] . We investigated how these regions process biological motion using a novel technique whereby we tested participants at different levels of their personal performance thresholds (at and above chance) determined psychophysically outside the scanner.