Study type: Human research · Status: Evidence verified by machine against declared source
Autism, oxytocin and interoception
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2014
Study scale: Kanner (1943) first described autism in 1943 as a relatively rare condition; yet, in 2012, nearly 1 in 50 children between the ages of 6–17 carried a diagnosis of autism (National Center for Health Statistics, 2013).
Abstract only: Open source record
Product or molecular entity relationships
- Oxytocin: Exact entity relationship. Legacy citation custody associates this source with the catalog record; no product-relevance conclusion is implied.
Public plain-language summary
The published text is limited to the declared source and preserves reported uncertainty. It does not establish efficacy, safety, suitability, or evidence strength.
Research question
Given this prevalence, identifying risk factors and therapeutic interventions are pressing objectives, objectives that rest on neurobiologically grounded and psychologically informed theories about the underlying pathophysiology.
Study design
These primary deficits would impair the child's ability to assign salience to socially relevant signals in the environment and disrupt the sensory attenuation necessary for proper homeostatic regulation, coordinated movement, and an outward focus during social encounters, thus undermining the imitation-based observational learning that normal children enjoy.
Participants or experimental system
Autism affects approximately 1% of children in developing countries.
Study scale
Kanner (1943) first described autism in 1943 as a relatively rare condition; yet, in 2012, nearly 1 in 50 children between the ages of 6–17 carried a diagnosis of autism (National Center for Health Statistics, 2013).
Intervention or exposure
Finally, we review the empirical evidence supporting this theory, evidence that speaks to abnormal interoceptive processing and subsequent failures of socio-emotional learning in autism and suggest how this theory might inform our approach to therapeutic treatment.
Comparator
Theories focused on the social and behavioral symptoms include: dysfunctional social and affective relations (Hobson, 1991); impaired joint social attention (Mundy et al., 1990); reduced social motivation (Dawson et al., 1998); empathizing vs. systemizing (Baron-Cohen, 2006); and, what has been characterized as the extreme male brain (Baron-Cohen, 2002).
Outcomes examined
These violations inform higher cortical levels, serving to recursively update the predictions such that optimal representations emerge at each level of the cortical hierarchy, thereby furnishing an explanation of the sensory world at multiple levels of description (see Fig. 1).
Key findings
In this article, we review the evidence that autism could result from a dysfunctional oxytocin system early in life.
Limitations and uncertainty
Computationally, precision is inverse variability or uncertainty.
Product relevance and evidence boundary
This record is a published study, held here with its citation and review status. It is not a statement that any catalog item is effective, safe, or suitable for any use, and nothing in it is a dose or a protocol.
Evidence verified by machine against declared source. Verification is limited to the declared source and review scope. It does not mean independent replication or establish efficacy, safety, or suitability.