Quantitative Sensory Testing to Study Pain Perception in Autism

This study aims at assess sensory perception, and pain perception, in neurodivergent children and adolescent in the autism spectrum. To achieve this goal, the quantitive sensory testing (QST), a controlled and replicable protocol, will be used, to assess perception in different sensory modalities: heat sensations, mechanical detection threshold and pain threshold. As secondary aim, the cortical processing of thermal painful stimuli will be collected through electroencephalography (EEG) in order to investigate if there are differences in the cortical processing of painful stimuli between clinical sample and control sample, and if it could be associated with differences in the subjective experience between the two groups. Finally, it will be explored the association between such differences, and indexes of psychopathology and dispositional measures.