Boosting social attunement in autism via interpersonal sensorimotor synchronization therapy

Humans are social beings by excellence. Almost all of our waking lives are spent in close company of others. As a result of this social and bodily embeddedness, biological and behavioral processes become entrained and coordinated with the interacting partner (i.e. biobehavioral synchrony). Paradoxically, however, socio-affective neuroscience approaches typically examine individual humans in isolation, presenting social signals on a computer screen or via headphones. Yet, this is fundamentally not how social interaction works: social interaction is dynamic and interactive. In the current project, we will compare the biobehavioral attunement of 6-to-8-year old children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) with that of matched typically developing controls, using dual multimodal biobehavioral measurements in a series of innovative real-life dyadic interaction paradigms. Furthermore, we will investigate the effect of visual sensorimotor synchronization training on this biobehavioral attunement, on sociability, and on endogenous oxytocin levels. By restoring the oxytocin system and dyadic attunement and reciprocity via sensorimotor synchronization intervention, the current project may pave the way for innovative combinatory therapies targeting the core social difficulties of ASD.