Reduced behavioral flexibility by aberrant sensory precision in autism spectrum disorder: A neurorobotics experiment

Recently, the importance of the application of computational models utilized in cognitive neuroscience to psychiatric disorders has been recognized. This study utilizes a recurrent neural network model to test aberrant sensory precision, a normative theory of autism spectrum disorder. We particularly focus on the effects of increased and decreased sensory precision on adaptive behavior based on a prediction error minimization mechanism. To distinguish dysfunction at the behavioral and network levels, we employ a humanoid robot driven by a neural network and observe ball-playing interactions with a human experimenter. Experimental results show that behavioral rigidity characteristic of autism spectrum disorder—including stopping movement and repetitive behavior—was generated from both increased and decreased sensory precision, but through different processes at the network level. These results may provide a system-level explanation of different types of behavioral rigidity in psychiatric diseases such as compulsions and stereotypies. The results also support a system-level model for autism spectrum disorder that suggests core deficits in estimating the uncertainty of sensory evidence.