Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurorehabilitation
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1490445
This article is part of the Research Topic Cognitive Strategies in motor learning and Rehabilitation View all 6 articles

Children with autistic spectrum disorder can imagine actions. What can this reveal about the Mirror Broken Hypothesis?

Provisionally accepted
Jessica Galli Jessica Galli 1,2Laura Dusi Laura Dusi 1,2Gioacchino Garofalo Gioacchino Garofalo 3,4Alessandra Brizzi Alessandra Brizzi 1Michela Gritti Michela Gritti 2Federica Polo Federica Polo 1ELISA MARIA FAZZI ELISA MARIA FAZZI 1,2Giovanni Buccino Giovanni Buccino 4,5*
  • 1 Department of Clinical and Experimental Sciences, University of Brescia, Brescia, Lombardy, Italy
  • 2 Unit of Child Neurology and Psychiatry, ASST Spedali Civili of Brescia, Brescia, Italy
  • 3 Department of Philosophy, University of Bologna, Bologna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy
  • 4 Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, Lombardy, Italy
  • 5 San Raffaele Hospital (IRCCS), Milan, Lombardy, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Objective: This study investigated whether children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can imagine object directed actions similarly to their typically developed (TD) peers. Study design:We tested the ability to imagine goal directed actions in children with ASD (n=18) and TD (n=18) peers by means of VMIQ-2 questionnaire and a novel behavioral task, in which children were requested to imagine some daily actions, after seeing them through videoclips presented on a computer screen. Observed actions lasted 4 s and children were requested to follow the same time course during imagination. During this motor imagery (MI) task, children were interrupted at a specific timepoint (e.g., at 1.5s) from the beginning of the task. Afterwards, they had to select one of two frames extracted from the videoclips: one showed the correct timepoint at which the imagined action was stopped, the other depicted an earlier or later timepoint. Children had to press the key associated to the correct frame to provide their responses. Results: Both groups performed similarly in the questionnaire and in the novel MI task, where they showed the same error rate. Errors distribution suggests that all children exploited a similar strategy to solve the task, being errors mainly distributed in judging the later frame. Conclusion: These findings support the view that children with ASD can imagine actions similarly to their TD peers. These results do not fully support the Broken Mirror Hypothesis and may encourage the use of MI as a cognitive strategy in the rehabilitation of autism.

    Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Motor Imagery, mirror neuron system, Broken Mirror Hypothesis, motor system

    Received: 03 Sep 2024; Accepted: 08 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Galli, Dusi, Garofalo, Brizzi, Gritti, Polo, FAZZI and Buccino. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Giovanni Buccino, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, Milan, 20132, Lombardy, Italy

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.