fMRI Study of Recognition of Facial Expressions in High-Functioning Autistic Patients Ogai M, Matsumoto
H, Suzuki K, Ozawa F, Fukuda R, Uchiyama I, Suckling J, Isoda H, Mori
N, Takei N. SA. Abstract: Neuroreport. 2003 Mar 24;14(4):559-63 Findings Autistic disorder is associated with defects
in communication and impaired development of social skills. Children with
autistic disorder have difficulties reading the emotions expressed by
others through their faces and find it difficult to share emotions with
others. Recent studies suggest abnormalities in the functioning of specific
brain areas of children with autism in reading facial expressions. In
this study, Dr. Ogai and his colleagues studied whether these children
show abnormalities in brain functioning when processing emotions from
faces. Five adults (average 21 years) and 9 typical subjects (average 23 years) were studied with functional MRI scanning while viewing different faces. Each subject was asked to identify whether the face appeared happy, disgusted, or fearful, or neutral (no emotion). During presentation of faces with fearful expressions, the typical (control) adults showed more activation than autistic adults in the brain area called the left middle frontal gyrus, suggesting this area is involved in interpreting information on fear or disgust expressed in the faces of others. In subjects with autism, this brain region does not function as well so that during presentation of faces showing disgust or fear, subjects with autism showed less activation than controls in brain regions of left insula, left inferior frontal gyrus, and left putamen. This result is consistent with other studies that show these regions are involved in responses to offensive tastes.
Conclusions These findings show that unlike typically developing persons, those with autism may have a widely distributed impairment in brain circuits that process emotions from faces. Subjects with autism may have difficulty in grasping facially expressed emotions from others, and therefore cannot behave in an effective and emotionally appropriate way. |