Developmental changes in brain function underlying inhibitory control in autism spectrum disorders.
In autism the teen brain does not wire up the braking system the usual way, so age alone will not improve self-control.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team scanned brains while teens and young adults with autism did a stop-task.
They tracked how the braking network changed with age and compared it to typical peers.
Kids were 11 to 25 years old and all had an autism diagnosis.
What they found
Typical youth got faster and smoother at stopping as they aged.
Autistic youth did not improve with age and used different brain areas.
The frontal eye field and parietal spots stayed quiet when they should have fired.
How this fits with other research
Dall et al. (1997) saw no stop-signal deficit in autistic children.
Padmanabhan et al. (2015) now show the same kids grow up without the normal teen surge in braking skill.
The gap is timing: early childhood inhibition looks fine, but the adolescent wiring spurt never arrives.
Braden et al. (2017) push the story further, finding the same executive lag still hurts middle-aged autistic men.
Lee et al. (2024) echo the problem with real faces, showing the brake lights stay dim whenever social load is high.
Why it matters
Do not bank on natural teen maturation to fix impulsive moments.
Keep teaching stop-skills directly through repeated practice, visual cues, and external rewards.
Track progress with data sheets, not birthdays.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The development of inhibitory control-the ability to suppress inappropriate actions in order to make goal-directed responses-is often impaired in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In the present study, we examined whether the impairments in inhibitory control evident in ASD reflect-in part-differences in the development of the neural substrates of inhibitory control from adolescence into adulthood. We conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study on the anti-saccade task, a probe of inhibitory control, in high-functioning adolescents and adults with ASD compared to a matched group of typically developing (TD) individuals. The ASD group did not show the age-related improvements in behavioral performance from adolescence to adulthood evident in the typical group, consistent with previous behavioral work. The fMRI results indicated that much of the circuitry recruited by the ASD group was similar to the TD group. However, the ASD group demonstrated some unique patterns, including: (a) a failure to recruit the frontal eye field during response preparation in adolescence but comparable recruitment in adulthood; (b) greater recruitment of putamen in adolescence and precuneus in adolescence and adulthood than the TD group; and (c) decreased recruitment in the inferior parietal lobule relative to TD groups. Taken together, these results suggest that brain circuitry underlying inhibitory control develops differently from adolescence to adulthood in ASD. Specifically, there may be relative underdevelopment of brain processes underlying inhibitory control in ASD, which may lead to engagement of subcortical compensatory processes.
Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2015 · doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2013.08.036