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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Testing Sensory and Multisensory Function in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Published on: April 22, 2015

Autism, oxytocin and interoception.

E Quattrocki¹, Karl Friston¹

¹The Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, UCL, 12 Queen Square, London WC1N 3BG, UK.

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews

|October 4, 2014

Summary

A dysfunctional oxytocin system in infancy may explain autism. This hormone is crucial for social behavior and emotional self-modeling, and its aberrant function could underlie autism

Keywords:

Active inference Autism Bayesian predictive coding Emotional affordance Interoception Neuromodulation Oxytocin Self-awareness Sensory attenuation

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Last Updated: Apr 23, 2026

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Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Conscious and Non-conscious Representations of Emotional Faces in Asperger's Syndrome

Published on: July 31, 2016

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Developmental Psychology
Genetics

Background:

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive developmental disorder affecting 1% of children globally.
Core features include social-communication deficits, stereotyped behaviors, and cognitive abnormalities.
Identifying underlying pathophysiology and risk factors is crucial for therapeutic interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

To review evidence linking autism to a dysfunctional oxytocin system in early development.
To propose a neurobiological and psychological framework for oxytocin's role in autism.
To explore oxytocin's function in social behavior, emotional self-modeling, and neuronal plasticity.

Main Methods:

Review of existing neurobiological and psychological literature on autism and the oxytocin system.
Formulation of a hypothesis within a Bayesian predictive coding framework.
Analysis of oxytocin's proposed role in interoceptive signal processing and neuronal plasticity.

Main Results:

Oxytocin plays a critical role in mediating socio-sexual behaviors and reproductive success.
Oxytocin is proposed to encode the precision of interoceptive signals.
Aberrant oxytocin system function in infancy may impair the acquisition of a generative model of the self.

Conclusions:

A dysfunctional oxytocin system early in life is a potential neurobiological basis for autism.
This dysfunction could explain the diverse range of abnormalities observed in autism, including social, communication, sensory, and cognitive deficits.
Further research into the oxytocin system may yield novel therapeutic targets for autism.