A Review of Functional and Structural Neurobiology of the Action Observation Network in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Developmental Coordination Disorder

Abstract

Recent research has reported motor impairment similarities between children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) and a subgroup of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there is a debate as to whether DCD is a co-occurring diagnosis in individuals with ASD and motor impairments (ASDd), or if motor impairments in ASD are distinct from DCD. However, the etiology of motor impairments is not well understood in either disorder. Clarifying comorbidities in ASD is important to determine different etiopathological phenotyping clusters in ASD and to understand the variety of genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the disorder. Furthermore, this distinction has important therapeutic relevance. Here we explore the current neuroimaging findings in ASD and DCD and discusses possible neural mechanisms that underlie similarities and differences between the disorders.

Keywords

• Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
• developmental coordination disorder (DCD)
• action observation network (AON)
• functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
• resting state
• diffusion weighted imaging (DWI)