Autistic people show weaker brain responses to negative feedback

Some people who have autism spectrum disorder struggle to adapt to changing demands in their environment. New in JNeurosci, researchers discovered this struggle may be because these individuals are less sensitive to feedback about their behavior than individuals who do not have autism. This work was led by Nathaniel Zuk at Nottingham Trent University and Jaroslav Slobodskoy-Plusnin at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in collaboration with colleagues at the University College London and Hebrew University. 

Study participants discriminated between pitches and received feedback about their responses. By assessing a brain activity measure that represents neural responses to negative feedback, the researchers discovered that people with autism had weaker responses to negative feedback than those who did not have autism. 

When people are confident in a decision they have made, this confidence can shape how they respond to feedback. The research team wondered whether the weaker brain responses to feedback in those with autism are shaped differently by decision confidence than individuals without autism. People with autism were less affected by changes to task difficulty, suggesting that their processing of that feedback is weaker than those without autism. Furthermore, participants without autism behaved differently after easy trials; when they succeeded in discriminating between pitches, their next choice would be biased by those pitches from the previously easy trial. 

According to the researchers, this work supports the idea that autism may reduce the sensitivity of individuals to both external ("You are incorrect.") and internal ("I feel confident about my choice.") feedback about decisions they make. A potential next step for the researchers is exploring how these behavioral differences are represented in the brain, particularly in a brain area called the anterior cingulate cortex.