ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2022
Autism Spectrum Disorder in Children Is Not Associated With Abnormal Autonomic Nervous System Function: Hypothesis and Theory.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 21 citations in OpenAlex.
- Electrodermal Activity as a Metric of Arousal in Autistic Children Prior to Dental Treatment.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Interplay between resting heart rate variability, daily affective dynamics and mental health difficulties in autistic youths.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Article
- Development of Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia in Young Infants With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Preterm Birth, and Typical Development.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Article
- Autonomic Disequilibrium at Rest in Autistic Children and Adults.Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback · 2025Article
- Feasibility of one-month home-based HRV monitoring in ASD: a case study using smart clothing technology.Frontiers in digital health · 2025Article
- Functional Neurological Disorder and Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Complex and Potentially Significant Relationship.Brain and behavior · 2024Review
- Comparative analysis of electrodermal activity metrics and their association with child behavior in autism spectrum disorder.Developmental psychobiology · 2024Article
- Vasopressin as Possible Treatment Option in Autism Spectrum Disorder.Biomedicines · 2023Review
- Heart Rate Variability as a Translational Dynamic Biomarker of Altered Autonomic Function in Health and Psychiatric Disease.Biomedicines · 2023Review
- Questionnaire-based analysis of autism spectrum disorders and gastrointestinal symptoms in children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2023Review
- Parasympathetic functioning and sleep problems in children with autism spectrum disorder.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2022Article
- Parasympathetic withdrawal indexes risk for emotion dysregulation in children with autism spectrum disorder.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2022Article
- Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback to Treat Anxiety in Young People With Autism Spectrum Disorder: Findings From a Home-Based Pilot Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Article
- Modulation of the autonomic nervous system by one session of spinal low-level laser therapy in patients with chronic colonic motility dysfunction.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The quest to understand the pathophysiology of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has led to extensive literature that purports to provide evidence for autonomic dysfunction based on heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), in particular respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), a measure of parasympathetic functioning. Many studies conclude that autism is associated with vagal withdrawal and sympathetic hyperactivation based on HRV and electrodermal analyses. We will argue that a critical analysis of the data leads to the hypothesis that autonomic nervous system dysfunction is not a dominant feature of autism. Most children with ASD have normal parasympathetic baseline values and normal autonomic responses to social stimuli. The existing HRV and electrodermal data cannot lead to the conclusion of an over-excitation of the sympathetic nervous system. A small subgroup of ASD children in experimental settings has relatively low RSA values and relatively high heart rates. The data suggest that this is likely associated with a relatively high level of anxiety during study conditions, associated with co-morbidities such as constipation, or due to the use of psychoactive medication. Many studies interpret their data to conform with a preferred hypothesis of autonomic dysfunction as a trait of autism, related to the polyvagal theory, but the HRV evidence is to the contrary. HRV analysis may identify children with ASD having autonomic dysfunction due to co-morbidities.
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Registered trials
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