Social touch and disordered development: autism

Following on from my previous Blog on 5th September ('Social touch and human development' ... an interesting paper) reporting on the paper 'Social touch and human development' by Cascio, Moore, & McGlone, in this Blog I will focus on one important aspect, this being 'Social touch and disordered development: autism'.

What the authors say about touch and how it more specifically relates to people with autism is I think highly significant. They make the following points:

• The impact of social touch on the developing brain and the consequences of its altered trajectory in childhood are indicated as being 'highly relevant for autism spectrum disorder'. 

• Children with autism 'exhibit aberrant behavioral responses to touch which are strongly linked both with the core clinical symptoms [of Autism] ... and genetic variants that increase serotonin transporter function'. 

• 'Experimenter-delivered affective (pleasant and unpleasant) touch to children with autism elicits defensive reactions that are more severe in CT-innervated somatotopic regions [i.e. touching their face or arms] than in non-CT-innervated regions [e.g. touch to their palms]' - which is an interesting finding, if it is generalisable to the more general autistic population! 

• 'Taken together, these results indicate that social touch is altered in autism', although the authors do say that it isn't yet clear how this impacts on individuals with autism who experience specific forms of 'hyper-responsiveness and hypo-responsiveness'. 

• The authors also go on to say that: 'Both hypo-responsiveness and hyper-responsiveness to social touch may result in reduced input (occurring naturally or resulting from defensive/avoiding behaviors) that alters the trajectory of the developing social brain starting in infancy'.  

• Then perhaps most importantly the authors state that: 'Given the fundamental importance of social touch for infant’s formation of secure attachment, cognitive and linguistic development, social reward, and emotion regulation, these differences are likely to have far-reaching effects'. 

The authors finally sum up with the vitally important statement that: 

'A better understanding of these sensory-social developmental sequelae (i.e. the developmental consequences of the altered touch related neural responses of individuals with autism) holds great promise for developing and refining early intervention approaches based on sensory features'.

The sooner the better I would suggest.