Perceptual dysregulation in autism and the therapeutic potential of artificial intelligence: The contribution of neuroscience in a multidimensional view in the understanding of emotional responses in the autistic syndrome.

Abstract

The complexity of the clinical picture characterizing neurodevelopmental disorders opens up a vast and heterogeneous field of study in which Gestalt psychotherapy offers its scientific contribution through the holistic vision of the person and processes. The sense-perceptual development of autistic subjects represents one of the areas of greatest clinical interest, since it particularly conditions the expression of intersubjectivity in ASD. Much of the neurocognitive and behavioral deficits associated with autistic disorder can, in fact, be explained by an alteration in the sense-perceptive regulation of environmental stimuli that normally allow the individual to relate to his environment, therefore contact with reality and with everything that surrounds it. 

From the perspective of Gestalt psychotherapy enriched by the contribution of neuroscience, the aim of this work is to describe the tools used in the work on the sense-perceptual regulation of the adult autistic subject. To this end, fragments of one's clinical experience are represented.

The Gestalt psychotherapy approach and developments in neuroscience are configured in the intervention of autism with a multidimensional vision. New therapeutic horizons offered by mutual synergy therefore seem to open up to the scientific community and offer new models of analysis and understanding for an integrated intervention. In order to envisage a targeted intervention, the preferred channel is identified at that moment which is most active. Gestalt psychotherapy includes among its strengths an intervention oriented towards the integration of experience, awareness of one's own needs and emotions through what it defines "contact", and in the context of this pathology, it promotes the most functional adaptation to your environment. Meaning and value is attributed to the subjective experience in people with autism in which the process of elaboration and understanding of sensory information is deficient because it is altered. For this reason, a sensory overload in input derives, which determines an inadequate behavioural response in output. The perception of the sensory experience is thus fragmented. From this we can imagine the pain, confusion and the need to intervene, in terms of treatment, on the various levels of experience.

Keywords: autism, perceptions, integration.