Cargando…

Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism

Despite the impressive literature describing atypical neural activation in visuoperceptual face processing regions in autism, almost nothing is known about whether these perturbations extend to more affective regions in the circuitry and whether they bear any relationship to symptom severity or atyp...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Scherf, K. Suzanne, Elbich, Daniel, Minshew, Nancy, Behrmann, Marlene
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4299957/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25610767
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2014.11.003
_version_ 1782353456298721280
author Scherf, K. Suzanne
Elbich, Daniel
Minshew, Nancy
Behrmann, Marlene
author_facet Scherf, K. Suzanne
Elbich, Daniel
Minshew, Nancy
Behrmann, Marlene
author_sort Scherf, K. Suzanne
collection PubMed
description Despite the impressive literature describing atypical neural activation in visuoperceptual face processing regions in autism, almost nothing is known about whether these perturbations extend to more affective regions in the circuitry and whether they bear any relationship to symptom severity or atypical behavior. Using fMRI, we compared face-, object-, and house-related activation in adolescent males with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developing (TD) matched controls. HFA adolescents exhibited hypo-activation throughout the core visuoperceptual regions, particularly in the right hemisphere, as well as in some of the affective/motivational face-processing regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex and right anterior temporal lobe. Conclusions about the relative hyper- or hypo-activation of the amygdala depended on the nature of the contrast that was used to define the activation. Individual differences in symptom severity predicted the magnitude of face activation, particularly in the right fusiform gyrus. Also, among the HFA adolescents, face recognition performance predicted the magnitude of face activation in the right anterior temporal lobe, a region that supports face individuation in TD adults. Our findings reveal a systematic relation between the magnitude of neural dysfunction, severity of autism symptoms, and variation in face recognition behavior in adolescents with autism. In so doing, we uncover brain–behavior relations that underlie one of the most prominent social deficits in autism and help resolve discrepancies in the literature.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4299957
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2014
publisher Elsevier
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-42999572015-01-21 Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism Scherf, K. Suzanne Elbich, Daniel Minshew, Nancy Behrmann, Marlene Neuroimage Clin Regular Article Despite the impressive literature describing atypical neural activation in visuoperceptual face processing regions in autism, almost nothing is known about whether these perturbations extend to more affective regions in the circuitry and whether they bear any relationship to symptom severity or atypical behavior. Using fMRI, we compared face-, object-, and house-related activation in adolescent males with high-functioning autism (HFA) and typically developing (TD) matched controls. HFA adolescents exhibited hypo-activation throughout the core visuoperceptual regions, particularly in the right hemisphere, as well as in some of the affective/motivational face-processing regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex and right anterior temporal lobe. Conclusions about the relative hyper- or hypo-activation of the amygdala depended on the nature of the contrast that was used to define the activation. Individual differences in symptom severity predicted the magnitude of face activation, particularly in the right fusiform gyrus. Also, among the HFA adolescents, face recognition performance predicted the magnitude of face activation in the right anterior temporal lobe, a region that supports face individuation in TD adults. Our findings reveal a systematic relation between the magnitude of neural dysfunction, severity of autism symptoms, and variation in face recognition behavior in adolescents with autism. In so doing, we uncover brain–behavior relations that underlie one of the most prominent social deficits in autism and help resolve discrepancies in the literature. Elsevier 2014-11-18 /pmc/articles/PMC4299957/ /pubmed/25610767 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2014.11.003 Text en © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-SA license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).
spellingShingle Regular Article
Scherf, K. Suzanne
Elbich, Daniel
Minshew, Nancy
Behrmann, Marlene
Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title_full Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title_fullStr Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title_full_unstemmed Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title_short Individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
title_sort individual differences in symptom severity and behavior predict neural activation during face processing in adolescents with autism
topic Regular Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4299957/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25610767
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nicl.2014.11.003
work_keys_str_mv AT scherfksuzanne individualdifferencesinsymptomseverityandbehaviorpredictneuralactivationduringfaceprocessinginadolescentswithautism
AT elbichdaniel individualdifferencesinsymptomseverityandbehaviorpredictneuralactivationduringfaceprocessinginadolescentswithautism
AT minshewnancy individualdifferencesinsymptomseverityandbehaviorpredictneuralactivationduringfaceprocessinginadolescentswithautism
AT behrmannmarlene individualdifferencesinsymptomseverityandbehaviorpredictneuralactivationduringfaceprocessinginadolescentswithautism