Lara Cavinato
Master student Biomedical Engineering - Politecnico di Milano (in collaboration with Sinha Lab, McGovern Institute for brain research, MIT)
DEIB - NECST Meeting Room (Building 20, basement floor)
April 27th, 2018
12.00 pm
Contacts:
Marco Santambrogio
Research Line:
System architectures
It is estimated that nearly 90% of all children on the autism spectrum suffer from sensory abnormalities, often hypersensitivities, to stimuli that a neuro-typical individual could easily ignore (Leekam et al., 2007). These hypersensitivities can, in principle, be caused by abnormally acute sensory capabilities. However, empirical data contradict this possibility; individuals with autism do not differ systematically from neurotypical controls in their sensory acuity (DePape et al., 2012; Bölte et al., 2012). Here we consider an alternative account of hypersensitivities in autism. A key role in suppressing sustained stimulation is played by our ability to habituate. It follows that reduced habituation would reduce stimulus suppression. Immersion in an unrelentingly salient stimulus would lead to a sense of being overwhelmed. Thus, the aversion to environmental stimuli that individuals with autism exhibit could, in principle, arise from reduced habituation. In this proposal, we describe experiments to rigorously test the hypothesis that autism is associated with reduced habituation. This hypothesis can have significant impact on our understanding of a prominent aspect of the autism phenotype, and also help design novel kinds of early diagnostic tests.
The NECSTLab is a DEIB laboratory, with different research lines on advanced topics in computing systems: from architectural characteristics, to hardware-software codesign methodologies, to security and dependability issues of complex system architectures.
Every week, the “NECST Friday Talk” invites researchers, professionals or entrepreneurs to share their work experiences and projects they are implementing in the “Computing Systems”.