David Moore

Pain sensation and behaviour in autism

The social and communications problems in autism are well known about and lots of research has examined these. Researchers and clinicians however often ignore the sensory problems common in autism. Recent diagnostic criteria of autism include insensitivity to pain as a specific example of this abnormality. During this talk I will consider what we mean when we think of pain, what it might mean to have altered pain sensitivity and some implications of misinterpreting these data. This talk (based on a recent review; Moore, 2015) will consider evidence for alterations in pain sensitivity in terms of self-report, observations of behavioural changes in response to pain, and response to experimental lab based pain as well as what any changes might tell us about pain in autism. The findings of this review show that parents, clinicians and people with autism report being less sensitive to pain. When people have observed pain in medical settings however and experimental pain in a lab setting people with autism seem to experience the same pain or maybe even more. There are still a large number of questions unanswered and the reasons for or implications of altered pain perception in autism are still unknown.