Impact of Failure to Attenuate Interoceptive Cues in Autism

Seth and Friston (2016) reviewed the proposal that a failure to attenuate the precision of interoceptive prediction errors in autism renders autistic infants unduly sensitive to interoceptive cues, producing a form of autonomic hypersensitivity. They described how this inability to ignore the absence of interoceptive signals normally associated with nurturing, such as breastfeeding, during affiliative interactions with a caregiver could prevent an autistic infant from learning that the nurturing, prosocial parent and the parent encountered through other senses are the same underlying cause. The authors concluded that this mechanism carries interesting implications for attachment, theory of mind, and the lack of central coherence that characterizes autism later in life, while also offering an explanation for interoceptive hypersensitivity and reduced engagement with prosocial cues. (Seth & Friston, 2016)