Systematic Review of fMRI Studies on Action Processing in Autistic Youth

A systematic review synthesizing results from eight functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies on brain activation during action execution, imitation, and observation in autistic children and adolescents. The review includes data from 129 autistic and 128 typically developing participants under 18 years old. It was authored by Hanna Hjärtström and published on figshare in 2026.

Use Cases

• Meta-analysis of brain activation patterns based on the synthesized fMRI results.
• Comparative study of neural processing during action observation, imitation, and execution in autistic versus typically developing youth.
• Literature review to identify gaps in fMRI research on naturalistic actions in autism.

Strengths

• Includes a defined scope of eight peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2025.
• Reports specific participant counts: 129 autistic and 128 typically developing individuals.
• Categorizes findings into three distinct action domains: execution, observation, and imitation.

Limitations

• The dataset is a 41.9 KB DOCX document, indicating a very limited textual summary rather than raw or structured data.
• Row count and column-level documentation are absent; the document's content must be manually inspected.
• The authors note limitations including a small number of studies, small sample sizes, and variability in fMRI pipelines.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Hanna Hjärtström.

Collection Method

Systematic review of peer-reviewed English articles.

Time Range

Studies published between 2000 and 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-13 05:36:06.

Geography

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