Basal ganglia and autism - a translational perspective.
Motor delays in autism may reflect basal ganglia circuit disruption—track them as potential early diagnostic flags.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Subramanian et al. (2017) read every paper they could find on basal ganglia imaging in autism.
They looked at both structure and function.
The goal was to see if these deep-brain motor circuits could explain movement and social quirks.
What they found
The review says the basal ganglia are wired differently in many people with autism.
This off-balance wiring may feed into both clumsy motor skills and rigid behaviors.
They urge clinicians to treat slow or awkward movement as a red flag for earlier screening.
How this fits with other research
Tanguay et al. (1982) first blamed the brainstem; Krishna’s team updates the story to the basal ganglia.
Kushki et al. (2011) show messy handwriting is common in autism. Their fine-motor data give real-life examples of the motor delays Krishna wants us to track.
Barthelemy et al. (1989) found normal brainstem hearing tests, which seems to clash. But they used sound clicks on preschoolers, while Krishna pooled imaging from all ages. Different tools, different ages, no true fight.
Bhaumik et al. (2009) also mine EEG markers for early flags, proving electrophysiology and deep-brain circuits can sit on the same assessment menu.
Why it matters
If you see a child with autism who trips, drops pencils, or takes forever to button, do not shrug it off. Note the skill gap, date it, and share it with the diagnosing team. Tracking motor milestones can speed up referral and give you solid baseline data for OT goals.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
UNLABELLED: The basal ganglia are a collection of nuclei below the cortical surface that are involved in both motor and non-motor functions, including higher order cognition, social interactions, speech, and repetitive behaviors. Motor development milestones that are delayed in autism such as gross motor, fine motor and walking can aid in early diagnosis of autism. Neuropathology and neuroimaging findings in autism cases revealed volumetric changes and altered cell density in select basal ganglia nuclei. Interestingly, in autism, both the basal ganglia and the cerebellum are impacted both in their motor and non-motor domains and recently, found to be connected via the pons through a short disynaptic pathway. In typically developing individuals, the basal ganglia plays an important role in: eye movement, movement coordination, sensory modulation and processing, eye-hand coordination, action chaining, and inhibition control. Genetic models have proved to be useful toward understanding cellular and molecular changes at the synaptic level in the basal ganglia that may in part contribute to these autism-related behaviors. In autism, basal ganglia functions in motor skill acquisition and development are altered, thus disrupting the normal flow of feedback to the cortex. Taken together, there is an abundance of emerging evidence that the basal ganglia likely plays critical roles in maintaining an inhibitory balance between cortical and subcortical structures, critical for normal motor actions and cognitive functions. In autism, this inhibitory balance is disturbed thus impacting key pathways that affect normal cortical network activity. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1751-1775. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Habit learning, action selection and performance are modulated by the basal ganglia, a collection of groups of neurons located below the cerebral cortex in the brain. In autism, there is emerging evidence that parts of the basal ganglia are structurally and functionally altered disrupting normal information flow. The basal ganglia through its interconnected circuits with the cerebral cortex and the cerebellum can potentially impact various motor and cognitive functions in the autism brain.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2017 · doi:10.1002/aur.1837