New research analysing data from over 15,000 children suggests that strong reactions to everyday sensations are uniquely associated with autism and anxiety, challenging previous assumptions about their links to ADHD and other psychiatric conditions.
A new study suggests that unusually strong reactions to everyday sounds, textures and other ordinary sensations are tied most clearly to autism and anxiety, rather than to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and other psychiatric conditions, according to research published last month in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
Researchers led by Rebecca Schwarzlose of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis pooled five earlier datasets and analysed information on 15,728 children aged 6 to 18. When each diagnosis was examined on its own, sensory over-responsivity appeared to be linked with all six psychiatric conditions the team studied. But once the researchers considered the traits together, the association narrowed: sensory over-responsivity remained uniquely connected to autism traits and anxiety symptoms, while the apparent ties to conditions such as ADHD weakened markedly or disappeared.
That result matters because sensory over-responsivity has long been recognised in autism, but it also shows up in children with other diagnoses and even in the general population. Prior work, including studies indexed by the National Institutes of Health, has suggested that sensory differences can reflect broader changes in sensory networks and may overlap across childhood psychiatric illnesses. Other NIH-catalogued research has also pointed to both shared and distinct biological mechanisms in autism and anxiety, reinforcing the idea that similar symptoms can arise from different underlying processes.
Experts not involved in the study said the scale of the analysis was an important strength, but they also cautioned against treating the findings as the final word. Grace Baranek of the University of Southern California said the large sample gave researchers a better chance to examine a trait that is often studied in much smaller groups. Shulamite Green of the University of California, Los Angeles, said the question of how ADHD relates to sensory over-responsivity remains open, even if the new data suggest that the biology may differ from that seen in autism and anxiety.
The team also examined brain scans from a subset of 9,197 children and reported reduced connectivity between the cingulo-parietal network and the caudate nuclei in children with greater sensory over-responsivity. Schwarzlose described those imaging results as preliminary, noting that some effects were small and did not hold up in a smaller replication sample. Her group is now using lab-based sensory tasks to probe the brain circuits more directly, in hopes of understanding why these responses can be so distressing for children who experience them.
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