Neural Noise and Autism

[Gerald Wilgus]

I came across this interesting article on how the autistic brain harnesses neural noise, utilizing stochastic resonance to enhance cognitive tasks. I am going to delve into this further because it seems an interesting postulate.

Autism Can Boost Cognitive Performance, And We May Finally Know Why

Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference associated with specific experiences and characteristics.

www.sciencealert.com

 

[Neonatal RRT]

I just checked Google Scholar for articles. Not much since 2020. Most of this work was done 2005 - 2015.

 

[marc_101]

I understood very little of the article. Need a translation

 

[The Pandector]

This is interesting, and seems in line with another study I came across…
Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Regarding neural noise and information gain in the autistic vs allistic brain. Though a research abstract, it rings a familiar bell for me.

 

[MNAus]

I understood very little of the article. Need a translation

So think of noise, like static on the radio. You'd think that generally that static would drown out the signal, especially when the signal is weak. So contrary to what you'd think, in some situations noise makes the signal clearer. Turns out that adding noise (visual noise) to challenging images where it's hard to discern what's pictured (simple things like letters, not artwork) makes it easier to detect the image. But in this experiment they observed that for autistic folk that tended not to be the case. The hypothesis is that we already have noise in our brain at a higher level than NTs and that already helps us discriminate using the above noise concept.

Personal thoughts: this might shed some light on why we receive so much information from our environments. We are just excellent at this technique of neural noise helping filter signals. It also fits with the concept of the brain actually being a prediction engine that needs to know whether to favour the prediction or observation when they don't agree and how autistic people tend to rely more on sensory/observation than their prediction model. If autistic people are more sensitive to the signals, these signals will play a larger role in our judgments. We might literally be spotting more patterns as NDs and trying to process these, while NTs are just going along more with what they predict in a situation. E.G. in a social situation we might actually be over-observing interactions, etc. and trying to work out how it all fits together, whereas an NT might be operating as "we're having a chat and this is how that works typically".

Interesting stuff.

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

So think of noise, like static on the radio. You'd think that generally that static would drown out the signal, especially when the signal is weak. So contrary to what you'd think, in some situations noise makes the signal clearer. Turns out that adding noise (visual noise) to challenging images where it's hard to discern what's pictured (simple things like letters, not artwork) makes it easier to detect the image. But in this experiment they observed that for autistic folk that tended not to be the case. The hypothesis is that we already have noise in our brain at a higher level than NTs and that already helps us discriminate using the above noise concept.

Personal thoughts: this might shed some light on why we receive so much information from our environments. We are just excellent at this technique of neural noise helping filter signals. It also fits with the concept of the brain actually being a prediction engine that needs to know whether to favour the prediction or observation when they don't agree and how autistic people tend to rely more on sensory/observation than their prediction model. If autistic people are more sensitive to the signals, these signals will play a larger role in our judgments. We might literally be spotting more patterns as NDs and trying to process these, while NTs are just going along more with what they predict in a situation. E.G. in a social situation we might actually be over-observing interactions, etc. and trying to work out how it all fits together, whereas an NT might be operating as "we're having a chat and this is how that works typically".

Interesting stuff.

I would like to see the interaction of neural noise on the Ascending Reticular Activating System which primes us to respond to the world around us.

 

[MNAus]

I would like to see the interaction of neural noise on the Ascending Reticular Activating System which primes us to respond to the world around us.

I would guess that many of the underlying causes of the neural noise might not be discriminatory to particular brain areas, though I don't know how much of an impact stochastic resonance would have in these areas.

 

[MNAus]

I also read up that the frontal cortex of ASD people tends to have a higher density of local neural connectivity, which might give a suggestion as to why there is a higher level of noise. Perhaps this noise isn't a bi-product of another advantage but IS the advantage.

 

[Seladon]

Huh. Perhaps explains why I need to sleep with a fan or a white noise machine on unless I'm misunderstanding the study completely, which wouldn't be a first (I'm arts not STEM, don't eat me)

 

[marc_101]

So think of noise, like static on the radio. You'd think that generally that static would drown out the signal, especially when the signal is weak. So contrary to what you'd think, in some situations noise makes the signal clearer. Turns out that adding noise (visual noise) to challenging images where it's hard to discern what's pictured (simple things like letters, not artwork) makes it easier to detect the image. But in this experiment they observed that for autistic folk that tended not to be the case. The hypothesis is that we already have noise in our brain at a higher level than NTs and that already helps us discriminate using the above noise concept.

Personal thoughts: this might shed some light on why we receive so much information from our environments. We are just excellent at this technique of neural noise helping filter signals. It also fits with the concept of the brain actually being a prediction engine that needs to know whether to favour the prediction or observation when they don't agree and how autistic people tend to rely more on sensory/observation than their prediction model. If autistic people are more sensitive to the signals, these signals will play a larger role in our judgments. We might literally be spotting more patterns as NDs and trying to process these, while NTs are just going along more with what they predict in a situation. E.G. in a social situation we might actually be over-observing interactions, etc. and trying to work out how it all fits together, whereas an NT might be operating as "we're having a chat and this is how that works typically".

Interesting stuff.

Thanks! I appreciate the explanation. Interesting.