Young children with autism show atypical brain responses to fearful versus neutral facial expressions of emotion

Negative emotions reduce sensorimotor cortex activity during proprioceptive modulation of rolandic ∼20HZ beta rhythm in typically developing children and those with neurodevelopmental conditions

BACKGROUND

The Rolandic ∼20-Hz beta rhythm of the sensorimotor cortex is associated with motor function and perception. However, the modulation of this rhythm by different emotional stimuli is an innovative area of research.

AIMS

This study aims at investigating the impact of affective pictures (positive, negative, and neutral) on the proprioceptive modulation of the Rolandic ∼20 Hz beta rhythm in typically developing children and children with neurodevelopmental disorders (i.e. cerebral palsy and autism).

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

EEG was recorded while participants experienced passive wrist movements during the simultaneous viewing of affective pictures. Time-frequency analysis of the sensorimotor oscillatory activity was performed.

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

Our findings revealed that pictures with negative emotional valence notably diminish event-related synchronization (ERS) amplitude during the perception of hand movement in all groups of children.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

These findings suggest that emotional stimuli, particularly the negative ones, could significantly influence brain's processing of proprioception, adding knowledge to the interaction of common comorbidities, such as sensorimotor disorders and emotional dysregulation, in children with neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Autonomic and hedonic response to affective touch in autism spectrum disorder

Interpersonal touch plays a crucial role in shaping relationships and encouraging social connections. Failure in processing tactile input or abnormal tactile sensitivity may hamper social behaviors and have severe consequences in individuals' relational lives. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by both sensory disruptions and social impairments, making affective touch an ideal meeting point for understanding these features in ASD individuals. By integrating behavioral and physiological measures, we investigated the effects of affective touch on adult individuals with ASD from both an implicit and explicit perspective. Specifically, at an implicit level, we investigated whether and how receiving an affective touch influenced participants' skin conductance tonic and phasic components. At the explicit level, we delved into the affective and unpleasant features of affective touch. Overall, we observed lower skin conductance level in ASD compared to TD subjects. Interestingly, the typically developing (TD) group showed an increased autonomic response for affective touch compared to a control touch, while ASD subjects' autonomic response did not differ between the two conditions. Furthermore, ASD participants provided higher ratings for both the affective and unpleasant components of the touch, compared to TD subjects. Our results reveal a noteworthy discrepancy in ASD population between the subjective experience, characterized by amplified hedonic but also unpleasant responses, and the physiological response, marked by a lack of autonomic activation related to affective touch. This insightful dissociation seems crucial for a deeper understanding of the distinctive challenges characterizing people with ASD and may have implications for diagnosis and therapeutic approaches.

Measuring Parent-Child Transactions for Early Identification of Young Autistic Children

This study explored the salient characteristics of transactions within parent-child engagement and investigated relationships between transactional characteristics and future identification of autism. The main aims of the study were to (1) examine if parents/children and their initial behaviors impact the length of transaction; (2) determine miscue differences among parents and children; and (3) determine if transactional characteristics are predictive of autism at preschool age.The study sample was drawn from extant data of a parent-mediated intervention for young children showing early sings of autism. Thirty parent-child dyad videos were randomly selected and coded for transactions. Statistical analyses were applied to examine the study aims and to perform post-hoc analyses.The length of transaction increased when children initiated with a look cue. Parents displayed a higher proportion of miscues and greater variance in their miscue behavior than their children. Neither the length of transaction nor the proportion of child miscues at 1-year of age predicted an autism diagnosis at preschool age. Post-hoc analyses revealed that girls with high variance of transaction length at 1-year of age, had a lower likelihood of showing autism traits at preschool age. Sustained transactions were more likely when children initiated engagement by looking. Early transactional characteristics were associated with later autism identification among girls, namely longer median transaction length with lower variance of transaction length. This transaction profile is believed to represent high fixation on topics with less ability to explore varied topics.

Social Knowledge & Performance in Autism: A Critical Review & Recommendations

Autistic social challenges have long been assumed to arise from a lack of social knowledge ("not knowing what to do"), which has undergirded theory and practice in assessment, treatment, and education. However, emerging evidence suggests these differences may be better accounted for by difficulties with social performance ("doing what they may know"). This distinction has important implications for research, practice, policy, and community support of autistic people. This review examines the theoretical and clinical implications and empirical status of the knowledge-performance distinction in autism. Current evidence suggests that social knowledge deficits are neither definitional nor reliably related to outcomes in autism. Prioritizing social knowledge, then, may produce unanticipated, problematic consequences in terms of accuracy of assessment, intervention effectiveness, and promotion of stigma. It may also yield unrealistic expectations around the value of knowledge for autistic people and their families, yielding important ethical considerations. Conversely, recent evidence highlights performance-related factors as being especially promising for better modeling and addressing social challenges in autism. Prioritizing performance, then, may offer new directions for assessment, substantially different intervention opportunities, and novel methods of inclusion and affirmation. This review touches upon each of these domains and implications, integrates these developments with broader models of social competence in youth, and provides direction for future research and practice regarding social competence in autism.

Measuring Transactional Engagement Among Young Children with Elevated Likelihood for Later Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis

This analytical study documented the presence of transactions in parent-child engagement within a sample of young children at an elevated likelihood for an eventual diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Specifically, the study examined the establishment of transactional engagement through reciprocal behaviors between parents and their young children at-risk for ASD. In the study sample, established transactional engagement occurred at a higher rate than other levels of engagement. Additionally, transactional engagement had a higher likelihood of being established when parents initiated. Post-hoc analyses revealed possible early markers of ASD within a certain behavior displayed in transactions. This study signifies the initial efforts in identifying transactions within parent-child engagement, and foremost, how transactional engagement is established.

Effect of short-term methylphenidate on social impairment in children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: systematic review

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common disorders in school-age children. In addition to learning difficulties associated with the disorder's core symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity, children with ADHD display substantial social impairments. Methylphenidate (MPH) in formulations such as Ritalin or Concerta mitigates inattention and hyperactivity, but the effects of the therapy on social behavior in children with ADHD are not clear. This review aims to determine the effectiveness of short term (up to 6 months) MPH treatment on three domains of social skills in children aged 6-14 with ADHD: (i) Recognition of nonverbal emotional expressions, which are a marker of inherent (unlearned) social understanding, (ii) theory of mind (ToM) components that relate to learned cognition and social communication, and (iii) social competence in everyday environments. 15 relevant studies were identified based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. The results show mixed effects: the overall social performance as evaluated by parents, teachers or peers, and some components of ToM, were found to improve following a weeks-long course of MPH treatment. However, the effects of the medication are less clear when evaluating momentary/nonverbal social responses such as reactions to emotional facial expressions. While the findings of this review indicate that an MPH medication regime of order weeks to months could improve, to a degree, social impairment in children with ADHD, more studies are required to identify the medications' mechanism and confirm such a conclusion.

Three- and six-year-old children are sensitive to natural body expressions of emotion: An event-related potential emotional priming study

Body movements provide a rich source of emotional information during social interactions. Although the ability to perceive biological motion cues related to those movements begins to develop during infancy, processing those cues to identify emotions likely continues to develop into childhood. Previous studies used posed or exaggerated body movements, which might not reflect the kind of body expressions children experience. The current study used an event-related potential (ERP) priming paradigm to investigate the development of emotion recognition from more naturalistic body movements. Point-light displays (PLDs) of male adult bodies expressing happy or angry emotional movements while narrating a story were used as prime stimuli, whereas audio recordings of the words "happy" and "angry" spoken with an emotionally neutral prosody were used as targets. We recorded the ERPs time-locked to the onset of the auditory target from 3- and 6-year-old children, and we compared amplitude and latency of the N300 and N400 responses between the two age groups in the different prime-target conditions. There was an overall effect of prime for the N300 amplitude, with more negative-going responses for happy PLDs compared with angry PLDs. There was also an interaction between prime and target for the N300 latency, suggesting that all children were sensitive to the emotional congruency between body movements and words. For the N400 component, there was only an interaction among age, prime, and target for latency, suggesting an age-dependent modulation of this component when prime and target did not match in emotional information. Overall, our results suggest that the emergence of more complex emotion processing of body expressions occurs around 6 years of age, but it is not fully developed at this point in ontogeny.

Preschoolers' Sensitivity to Negative and Positive Emotional Facial Expressions: An ERP Study

The study examined processing differences for facial expressions (happy, angry, or neutral) and their repetition with early (P1, N170) and late (P3) event-related potentials (ERPs) in young children (N = 33). EEG was recorded while children observed sequentially presented pairs of facial expressions, which were either the same (repeated trials) or differed in their emotion (novel trials). We also correlated ERP amplitude differences with parental and child measures of socio-emotional competence (emotion recognition, empathy). P1 amplitudes were increased for angry and happy as compared to neutral expressions. We also detected larger P3 amplitudes for angry expressions as compared to happy or neutral expressions. Repetition effects were evident at early and late processing stages marked by reduced P1 amplitudes for repeated vs. novel happy expressions, but enhanced P3 amplitudes for repeated vs. novel facial expressions. N170 amplitudes were neither modulated by facial expressions nor their repetition. None of the repetition effects were associated with measures of socio-emotional competence. Taken together, negative facial expressions led to increased neural activations in early and later processing stages, indicative of enhanced saliency to potential threating stimuli in young children. Processing of repeated facial expression seem to be differential for early and late neural stages: Reduced activation was detected at early neural processing stages particularly for happy faces, indicative of effective processing for an emotion, which is most familiar within this age range. Contrary to our hypothesis, enhanced activity for repeated vs. novel expression independent of a particular emotion were detected at later processing stages, which may be linked to the creation of new memory traces. Early and late repetition effects are discussed in light of developmental and perceptual differences as well as task-specific load.

Effects of emotional cues on novel word learning in typically developing children in relation to broader autism traits

Emotion can influence various cognitive processes. Communication with children often involves exaggerated emotional expressions and emotive language. Children with autism spectrum disorder often show a reduced tendency to attend to emotional information. Typically developing children aged 7 to 9 years who varied in their level of autism-like traits learned the nonsense word names of nine novel toys, which were presented with either happy, fearful, or neutral emotional cues. Emotional cues had no influence on word recognition or recall performance. Eye-tracking data showed differences in visual attention depending on the type of emotional cues and level of autism-like traits. The findings suggest that the influence of emotion on attention during word learning differs according to whether the children have lower or higher levels of autism-like traits, but this influence does not affect word learning outcomes.

Shared and Distinct Patterns of Functional Connectivity to Emotional Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Children

Impairments in emotional face processing are demonstrated by individuals with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which is associated with altered emotion processing networks. Despite accumulating evidence of high rates of diagnostic overlap and shared symptoms between ASD and ADHD, functional connectivity underpinning emotion processing across these two neurodevelopmental disorders, compared to typical developing peers, has rarely been examined. The current study used magnetoencephalography to investigate whole-brain functional connectivity during the presentation of happy and angry faces in 258 children (5–19 years), including ASD, ADHD and typically developing (TD) groups to determine possible differences in emotion processing. Data-driven clustering was also applied to determine whether the patterns of connectivity differed among diagnostic groups. We found reduced functional connectivity in the beta band in ASD compared to TD, and a further reduction in the ADHD group compared to the ASD and the TD groups, across emotions. A group-by-emotion interaction in the gamma frequency band was also observed. Greater connectivity to happy compared to angry faces was found in the ADHD and TD groups, while the opposite pattern was seen in ASD. Data-driven subgrouping identified two distinct subgroups: NDD-dominant and TD-dominant; these subgroups demonstrated emotion- and frequency-specific differences in connectivity. Atypicalities in specific brain networks were strongly correlated with the severity of diagnosis-specific symptoms. Functional connectivity strength in the beta network was negatively correlated with difficulties in attention; in the gamma network, functional connectivity strength to happy faces was positively correlated with adaptive behavioural functioning, but in contrast, negatively correlated to angry faces. Our findings establish atypical frequency- and emotion-specific patterns of functional connectivity between NDD and TD children. Data-driven clustering further highlights a high degree of comorbidity and symptom overlap between the ASD and ADHD children.

Face-Processing Performance is an Independent Predictor of Social Affect as Measured by the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule Across Large-Scale Datasets

Face-processing deficits, while not required for the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), have been associated with impaired social skills-a core feature of ASD; however, the strength and prevalence of this relationship remains unclear. Across 445 participants from the NIMH Data Archive, we examined the relationship between Benton Face Recognition Test (BFRT) performance and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Social Affect (ADOS-SA) scores. Lower BFRT scores (worse face-processing performance) were associated with higher ADOS-SA scores (higher ASD severity)-a relationship that held after controlling for other factors associated with face processing, i.e., age, sex, and IQ. These findings underscore the utility of face discrimination, not just recognition of facial emotion, as a key covariate for the severity of symptoms that characterize ASD.

Neural correlates of face processing associated with development of social communication in 12-month infants with familial risk of autism spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND

Differences in face processing in individuals with ASD is hypothesized to impact the development of social communication skills. This study aimed to characterize the neural correlates of face processing in 12-month-old infants at familial risk of developing ASD by (1) comparing face-sensitive event-related potentials (ERP) (Nc, N290, P400) between high-familial-risk infants who develop ASD (HR-ASD), high-familial-risk infants without ASD (HR-NoASD), and low-familial-risk infants (LR), and (2) evaluating how face-sensitive ERP components are associated with development of social communication skills.

METHODS

12-month-old infants participated in a study in which they were presented with alternating images of their mother's face and the face of a stranger (LR = 45, HR-NoASD = 41, HR-ASD = 24) as EEG data were collected. Parent-reported and laboratory-observed social communication measures were obtained at 12 and 18 months. Group differences in ERP responses were evaluated using ANOVA, and multiple linear regressions were conducted with maternal education and outcome groups as covariates to assess relationships between ERP and behavioral measures.

RESULTS

For each of the ERP components (Nc [negative-central], N290, and P400), the amplitude difference between mother and stranger (Mother-Stranger) trials was not statistically different between the three outcome groups (Nc p = 0.72, N290 p = 0.88, P400 p = 0.91). Marginal effects analyses found that within the LR group, a greater Nc Mother-Stranger response was associated with better expressive language skills on the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, controlling for maternal education and outcome group effects (marginal effects dy/dx = 1.15; p < 0.01). No significant associations were observed between the Nc and language or social measures in HR-NoASD or HR-ASD groups. In contrast, specific to the HR-ASD group, amplitude difference between the Mother versus Stranger P400 response was positively associated with expressive (dy/dx = 2.1, p < 0.001) and receptive language skills at 12 months (dy/dx = 1.68, p < 0.005), and negatively associated with social affect scores on the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (dy/dx = - 1.22, p < 0.001) at 18 months.

CONCLUSIONS

In 12-month-old infant siblings with subsequent ASD, increased P400 response to Mother over Stranger faces is positively associated with concurrent language and future social skills.

The autistic brain can process local but not global emotion regularities in facial and musical sequences

Whether autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with a global processing deficit remains controversial. Global integration requires extraction of regularity across various timescales, yet little is known about how individuals with ASD process regularity at local (short timescale) versus global (long timescale) levels. To this end, we used event-related potentials to investigate whether individuals with ASD would show different neural responses to local (within trial) versus global (across trials) emotion regularities extracted from sequential facial expressions; and if so, whether this visual abnormality would generalize to the music (auditory) domain. Twenty individuals with ASD and 21 age- and IQ-matched individuals with typical development participated in this study. At an early processing stage, ASD participants exhibited preserved neural responses to violations of local emotion regularity for both faces and music. At a later stage, however, there was an absence of neural responses in ASD to violations of global emotion regularity for both faces and music. These findings suggest that the autistic brain responses to emotion regularity are modulated by the timescale of sequential stimuli, and provide insight into the neural mechanisms underlying emotional processing in ASD.

A single-session behavioral protocol for successful event-related potential recording in children with neurodevelopmental disorders

Event-related potentials (ERPs) are an ideal tool for measuring neural responses in a wide range of participants, including children diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). However, due to perceived barriers regarding participant compliance, much of this work has excluded children with low IQ and/or reduced adaptive functioning, significant anxiety symptoms, and/or sensory processing difficulties, including heterogeneous samples of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and children with fragile X syndrome (FXS). We have developed a behavioral support protocol designed to obtain high-quality ERP data from children in a single session. Using this approach, ERP data were successfully collected from participants with ASD, FXS, and typical development (TD). Higher success rates were observed for children with ASD and TD than children with FXS. Unique clinical-behavioral characteristics were associated with successful data collection across these groups. Higher chronological age, nonverbal mental age, and receptive language skills were associated with a greater number of valid trials completed in children with ASD. In contrast, higher language ability, lower autism severity, increased anxiety, and increased sensory hyperresponsivity were associated with a greater number of valid trials completed in children with FXS. This work indicates that a "one-size-fits-all" approach cannot be taken to ERP research on children with NDDs, but that a single-session paradigm is feasible and is intended to promote increased representation of children with NDDs in neuroscience research through development of ERP methods that support inclusion of diverse and representative samples.

Multifaceted empathy differences in children and adults with autism

Although empathy impairments have been reported in autistic individuals, there is no clear consensus on how emotional valence influences this multidimensional process. In this study, we use the Multifaceted Empathy Test for juveniles (MET-J) to interrogate emotional and cognitive empathy in 184 participants (ages 8-59 years, 83 autistic) under the robust Bayesian inference framework. Group comparisons demonstrate previously unreported interaction effects between: (1) valence and autism diagnosis in predictions of emotional resonance, and (2) valence and age group in predictions of arousal to images portraying positive and negative facial expressions. These results extend previous studies using the MET by examining differential effects of emotional valence in a large sample of autistic children and adults with average or above-average intelligence. We report impaired cognitive empathy in autism, and subtle differences in emotional empathy characterized by less distinction between emotional resonance to positive vs. negative facial expressions in autism compared to neurotypicals. Reduced emotional differentiation between positive and negative affect in others could be a mechanism for diminished social reciprocity that poses a universal challenge for people with autism. These component- and valence- specific findings are of clinical relevance for the development and implementation of target-specific social interventions in autism.

Review: Posed vs. Genuine Facial Emotion Recognition and Expression in Autism and Implications for Intervention

Different styles of social interaction are one of the core characteristics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Social differences among individuals with ASD often include difficulty in discerning the emotions of neurotypical people based on their facial expressions. This review first covers the rich body of literature studying differences in facial emotion recognition (FER) in those with ASD, including behavioral studies and neurological findings. In particular, we highlight subtle emotion recognition and various factors related to inconsistent findings in behavioral studies of FER in ASD. Then, we discuss the dual problem of FER – namely facial emotion expression (FEE) or the production of facial expressions of emotion. Despite being less studied, social interaction involves both the ability to recognize emotions and to produce appropriate facial expressions. How others perceive facial expressions of emotion in those with ASD has remained an under-researched area. Finally, we propose a method for teaching FER [FER teaching hierarchy (FERTH)] based on recent research investigating FER in ASD, considering the use of posed vs. genuine emotions and static vs. dynamic stimuli. We also propose two possible teaching approaches: (1) a standard method of teaching progressively from simple drawings and cartoon characters to more complex audio-visual video clips of genuine human expressions of emotion with context clues or (2) teaching in a field of images that includes posed and genuine emotions to improve generalizability before progressing to more complex audio-visual stimuli. Lastly, we advocate for autism interventionists to use FER stimuli developed primarily for research purposes to facilitate the incorporation of well-controlled stimuli to teach FER and bridge the gap between intervention and research in this area.

Trial by trial EEG based BCI for distress versus non distress classification in individuals with ASD

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is often accompanied by impaired emotion regulation (ER). There has been increasing emphasis on developing evidence-based approaches to improve ER in ASD. Electroencephalography (EEG) has shown success in reducing ASD symptoms when used in neurofeedback-based interventions. Also, certain EEG components are associated with ER. Our overarching goal is to develop a technology that will use EEG to monitor real-time changes in ER and perform intervention based on these changes. As a first step, an EEG-based brain computer interface that is based on an Affective Posner task was developed to identify patterns associated with ER on a single trial basis, and EEG data collected from 21 individuals with ASD. Accordingly, our aim in this study is to investigate EEG features that could differentiate between distress and non-distress conditions. Specifically, we investigate if the EEG time-locked to the visual feedback presentation could be used to classify between WIN (non-distress) and LOSE (distress) conditions in a game with deception. Results showed that the extracted EEG features could differentiate between WIN and LOSE conditions (average accuracy of 81%), LOSE and rest-EEG conditions (average accuracy 94.8%), and WIN and rest-EEG conditions (average accuracy 94.9%).

Atypical spatiotemporal activation of cerebellar lobules during emotional face processing in adolescents with autism

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social deficits and atypical facial processing of emotional expressions. The underlying neuropathology of these abnormalities is still unclear. Recent studies implicate cerebellum in emotional processing; other studies show cerebellar abnormalities in ASD. Here, we elucidate the spatiotemporal activation of cerebellar lobules in ASD during emotional processing of happy and angry faces in adolescents with ASD and typically developing (TD) controls. Using magnetoencephalography, we calculated dynamic statistical parametric maps across a period of 500 ms after emotional stimuli onset and determined differences between group activity to happy and angry emotions. Following happy face presentation, adolescents with ASD exhibited only left‐hemispheric cerebellar activation in a cluster extending from lobule VI to lobule V (compared to TD controls). Following angry face presentation, adolescents with ASD exhibited only midline cerebellar activation (posterior IX vermis). Our findings indicate an early (125–175 ms) overactivation in cerebellar activity only for happy faces and a later overactivation for both happy (250–450 ms) and angry (250–350 ms) faces in adolescents with ASD. The prioritized hemispheric activity (happy faces) could reflect the promotion of a more flexible and adaptive social behavior, while the latter midline activity (angry faces) may guide conforming behavior.

Autism classified by magnetic resonance imaging: A pilot study of a potential diagnostic tool

OBJECTIVES

Individual anatomical biomarkers have limited power for the classification of autism. The present study introduces a multivariate classification approach using structural magnetic resonance imaging data from individuals with and without autism.

METHODS

The classifier utilizes z-normalization, parameter weighting, and interindividual comparison on brain segmentation data, for estimation of an individual summed total index (TI). The TI indicates whether the gross morphological pattern of each individual's brain is in the direction of cases or controls.

RESULTS

Morphometric analysis found significant differences within subcortical gray matter structures and limbic areas. There was no significant difference in total brain volume. A case-control pilot-study of TIs in normally intelligent individuals with autism (24) and without (21) yielded a maximal accuracy of 78.9% following cross-validation. It showed a high accuracy compared with machine learning methods when tested on the same dataset. The TI correlated well with the autism quotient (R = 0.51) across groups.

CONCLUSION

These results are on par with studies on autism using machine learning. The main contributions are its transparency and simplicity. The possibility of including additional neuroimaging data further increases the potential of the classifier as a diagnostic aid for neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as a research tool for neuroscientific investigations.

Facial Expression Processing Across the Autism-Psychosis Spectra: A Review of Neural Findings and Associations With Adverse Childhood Events

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and primary psychosis are classified as distinct neurodevelopmental disorders, yet they display overlapping epidemiological, environmental, and genetic components as well as endophenotypic similarities. For instance, both disorders are characterized by impairments in facial expression processing, a crucial skill for effective social communication, and both disorders display an increased prevalence of adverse childhood events (ACE). This narrative review provides a brief summary of findings from neuroimaging studies investigating facial expression processing in ASD and primary psychosis with a focus on the commonalities and differences between these disorders. Individuals with ASD and primary psychosis activate the same brain regions as healthy controls during facial expression processing, albeit to a different extent. Overall, both groups display altered activation in the fusiform gyrus and amygdala as well as altered connectivity among the broader face processing network, probably indicating reduced facial expression processing abilities. Furthermore, delayed or reduced N170 responses have been reported in ASD and primary psychosis, but the significance of these findings is questioned, and alternative frequency-tagging electroencephalography (EEG) measures are currently explored to capture facial expression processing impairments more selectively. Face perception is an innate process, but it is also guided by visual learning and social experiences. Extreme environmental factors, such as adverse childhood events, can disrupt normative development and alter facial expression processing. ACE are hypothesized to induce altered neural facial expression processing, in particular a hyperactive amygdala response toward negative expressions. Future studies should account for the comorbidity among ASD, primary psychosis, and ACE when assessing facial expression processing in these clinical groups, as it may explain some of the inconsistencies and confound reported in the field.

Polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder affects left amygdala activity and negative emotion in schizophrenia

Although the diagnoses based on phenomenology have many practical advantages, accumulating evidence shows that schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) share some overlap in genetics and clinical presentation. It remains largely unknown how ASD-associated polygenetic risk contributes to the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. In the present study, we calculated high-resolution ASD polygenic risk scores (ASD PRSs) and selected optimal ten ASD PRS with minimal P values in the association analysis of PRSs, with schizophrenia to assess the effect of ASD PRS on brain neural activity in schizophrenia cases and controls. We found that amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation in left amygdala was positively associated with ASD PRSs in our cohort. Correlation analysis of ASD PRSs with facial emotion recognition test identified the negative correlation of ASD PRSs with negative emotions in schizophrenia cases and controls. Finally, functional enrichment analysis of PRS genes revealed that neural system function and development, as well as signal transduction, were mainly enriched in PRS genes. Our results provide empirical evidence that polygenic risk for ASD contributes to schizophrenia by the intermediate phenotypes of left amygdala function and emotion recognition. It provides a promising strategy to understand the relationship between phenotypes and genotypes shared in mental disorders.

Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism spectrum disorder

BACKGROUND

Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results.

METHODS

We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess the neural sensitivity to implicitly detect briefly presented facial expressions among a stream of neutral faces, in 23 boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing (TD) boys. Neutral faces with different identities were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with an expressive face (angry, fearful, happy, sad in separate sequences) every fifth image (i.e., 1.2 Hz oddball frequency). These distinguishable frequency tags for neutral and expressive stimuli allowed direct and objective quantification of the expression-categorization responses, needing only four sequences of 60 s of recording per condition.

RESULTS

Both groups show equal neural synchronization to the general face stimulation and similar neural responses to happy and sad faces. However, the ASD group displays significantly reduced responses to angry and fearful faces, compared to TD boys. At the individual subject level, these neural responses allow to predict membership of the ASD group with an accuracy of 87%. Whereas TD participants show a significantly lower sensitivity to sad faces than to the other expressions, ASD participants show an equally low sensitivity to all the expressions.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results indicate an emotion-specific processing deficit, instead of a general emotion-processing problem: Boys with ASD are less sensitive than TD boys to rapidly and implicitly detect angry and fearful faces. The implicit, fast, and straightforward nature of FPVS-EEG opens new perspectives for clinical diagnosis.

Rationale, design, and methods of the Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) network Study of Oxytocin in Autism to improve Reciprocal Social Behaviors (SOARS-B)

OBJECTIVE

To describe the rationale, design, and methods of the Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) network Study of Oxytocin in Autism to improve Reciprocal Social Behaviors (SOARS-B).

METHOD

This phase 2 clinical trial was designed to evaluate the use of intranasal oxytocin treatment to improve social difficulties in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In total, 290 participants ages 3 to 17 years with a DSM-5 diagnosis of ASD were enrolled to receive 24 weeks of treatment with either oxytocin or a matched placebo at one of seven collaborating sites. Participants were subsequently treated with open-label oxytocin for 24 additional weeks. Post-treatment assessments were done approximately 4 weeks after treatment discontinuation. Plasma oxytocin and oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR) methylation level were measured at baseline, and week 8, 24 and 36 to explore potential relationships between these biomarkers and treatment response.

RESULTS

This report describes the rationale, design, and methods of the SOARS-B clinical trial.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a tremendous unmet need for safe and effective pharmacological treatment options that target the core symptoms of ASD. Several studies support the hypothesis that intranasal oxytocin could improve social orienting and the salience of social rewards in ASD, thereby enhancing reciprocal social behaviors. However, due to conflicting results from a number of pilot studies on the prosocial effects of exogenous oxytocin, this hypothesis remains controversial and inconclusive. SOARS-B is the best powered study to date to address this hypothesis and promises to improve our understanding of the safety and efficacy of intranasal oxytocin in the treatment of social deficits in children with ASD.

Event-Related Potential to Conscious and Nonconscious Emotional Face Perception in Females with Autistic-Like Traits

This study explored the electrocortical correlates of conscious and nonconscious perceptions of emotionally laden faces in neurotypical adult women with varying levels of autistic-like traits (Autism Spectrum Quotient—AQ). Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during the viewing of backward-masked images for happy, neutral, and sad faces presented either below (16 ms—subliminal) or above the level of visual conscious awareness (167 ms—supraliminal). Sad compared to happy faces elicited larger frontal-central N1, N2, and occipital P3 waves. We observed larger N1 amplitudes to sad faces than to happy and neutral faces in High-AQ (but not Low-AQ) scorers. Additionally, High-AQ scorers had a relatively larger P3 at the occipital region to sad faces. Regardless of the AQ score, subliminal perceived emotional faces elicited shorter N1, N2, and P3 latencies than supraliminal faces. Happy and sad faces had shorter N170 latency in the supraliminal than subliminal condition. High-AQ participants had a longer N1 latency over the occipital region than Low-AQ ones. In Low-AQ individuals (but not in High-AQ ones), emotional recognition with female faces produced a longer N170 latency than with male faces. N4 latency was shorter to female faces than male faces. These findings are discussed in view of their clinical implications and extension to autism.

Correlations between facial emotion recognition and cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorder

Purpose

Various studies have examined the role of executive functions in autism, but there is a lack of research in the current literature on cognitive flexibility in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The purpose of this study is to investigate whether cognitive flexibility deficits could be related to facial emotion recognition deficits in ASD.

Design/methodology/approach

In total, 20 children with ASD and 20 typically developing children, matched for intelligence quotient and gender, were examined both in facial emotion recognition tasks and in cognitive flexibility tasks through the dimensional change card sorting task.

Findings

Despite cognitive flexibility not being a core deficit in ASD, impaired cognitive flexibility is evident in the present research. Results show that cognitive flexibility is related to facial emotion recognition and support the hypothesis of an executive specific deficit in children with autism.

Research limitations/implications

One of the limit is the use of just one cognitive test to measure cognitive flexibility and facial recognition. This could be important to be taken into account in the new research. By increasing the number of common variables assessing cognitive flexibility, this will allow for a better comparison between studies to characterize impairment in cognitive flexibility in ASD.

Practical implications

Investigating impairment in cognitive flexibility may help to plan training intervention based on the induction of flexibility.

Social implications

If the authors implement cognitive flexibility people with ASD can have also an effect on their social behavior and overcome the typical and repetitive behaviors that are the hallmark of ASD.

Originality/value

The originality is to relate cognitive flexibility deficits to facial emotion.

Recognition of emotional facial expressions in adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder

INTRODUCTION

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is associated with impaired social competencies, due in part to an inability to determine emotional states through facial expressions. Social interactions are a critical component of adolescence, which raises the question of how do adolescents with ADHD cope with this impairment. Yet, previous reviews do not distinguish between children and adolescents. This review focuses on the ability of adolescents (defined by the World Health Organization as 10-19 years old) with ADHD to recognize emotional facial expressions, when compared to their typically-developing peers.

METHODS

Comprehensive database search and analysis yielded 9 relevant studies published between 2008 and 2018.

RESULTS

The studies reviewed here examined recognition of emotional facial expressions in adolescents with ADHD. Behavioral measures (reaction time, reaction time variance and recognition accuracy) show no statistically significant differences between adolescents with ADHD and their typically-developing peers. However, neural responses as recorded using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) or Event Related Potentials (ERP) find differences in brain activity and the temporal evolution of the reaction between the two groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Studies of children and of adults with ADHD find deficiencies in the recognition of emotional facial expressions. However, this review shows that adolescents with ADHD perform comparably to their peers on accuracy and rate, although their neural processing is different. This suggests that the methodologies employed by the ADHD and typically-developing adolescents to asses facial expressions are different. Further study is needed to determine what these may be.

Why is music therapeutic for neurological disorders? The Therapeutic Music Capacities Model

Music has cognitive, psychosocial, behavioral and motor benefits for people with neurological disorders such as dementia, stroke, Parkinson's disease (PD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Here we discuss seven properties or 'capacities' of music that interact with brain function and contribute to its therapeutic value. Specifically, in its various forms, music can be engaging, emotional, physical, personal, social and persuasive, and it promotes synchronization of movement. We propose the Therapeutic Music Capacities Model (TMCM), which links individual properties of music to therapeutic mechanisms, leading to cognitive, psychosocial, behavioral and motor benefits. We review evidence that these capacities have reliable benefits for people with dementia, stroke, PD and ASD when employed separately or in combination. The model accounts for the profound value that music affords human health and well-being and provides a framework for the development of non-pharmaceutical treatments for neurological disorders.

Biomarker Acquisition and Quality Control for Multi-Site Studies: The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials

The objective of the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials (ABC-CT) is to evaluate a set of lab-based behavioral video tracking (VT), electroencephalography (EEG), and eye tracking (ET) measures for use in clinical trials with children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Within the larger organizational structure of the ABC-CT, the Data Acquisition and Analytic Core (DAAC) oversees the standardization of VT, EEG, and ET data acquisition, data processing, and data analysis. This includes designing and documenting data acquisition and analytic protocols and manuals; facilitating site training in acquisition; data acquisition quality control (QC); derivation and validation of dependent variables (DVs); and analytic deliverables including preparation of data for submission to the National Database for Autism Research (NDAR). To oversee consistent application of scientific standards and methodological rigor for data acquisition, processing, and analytics, we developed standard operating procedures that reflect the logistical needs of multi-site research, and the need for well-articulated, transparent processes that can be implemented in future clinical trials. This report details the methodology of the ABC-CT related to acquisition and QC in our Feasibility and Main Study phases. Based on our acquisition metrics from a preplanned interim analysis, we report high levels of acquisition success utilizing VT, EEG, and ET experiments in a relatively large sample of children with ASD and typical development (TD), with data acquired across multiple sites and use of a manualized training and acquisition protocol.

Cross-modal emotion recognition and autism-like traits in typically developing children

The ability to explicitly recognize emotions develops gradually throughout childhood, and children usually have greater difficulty in recognizing emotions from the voice than from the face. However, little is known about how children integrate vocal and facial cues to recognize an emotion, particularly during mid to late childhood. Furthermore, children with an autism spectrum disorder often show a reduced ability to recognize emotions, especially when integrating emotion from multiple modalities. The current preliminary study explored the ability of typically developing children aged 7-9 years to match emotional tones of voice to facial expressions and whether this ability varies according to the level of autism-like traits. Overall, children were the least accurate when matching happy and fearful voices to faces, commonly pairing happy voices with angry faces and fearful voices with sad faces. However, the level of autism-like traits was not associated with matching accuracy. These results suggest that 7- to 9-year-old children have difficulty in integrating vocal and facial emotional expressions but that differences in cross-modal emotion matching in relation to the broader autism phenotype are not evident in this task for this age group with the current sample.

Autistic and alexithymic traits modulate distinct aspects of face perception

BACKGROUND

Atypical face processing is a prominent feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but is not universal and is subject to individual variability. This heterogeneity could be accounted for by reliable yet unidentified subgroups within the diverse population of individuals with ASD. Alexithymia, which is characterized by difficulties in emotion recognition and identification, serves as a potential grouping factor. Recent research demonstrates that emotion recognition impairments in ASD are predicted by its comorbidity with alexithymia. The current study assessed the relative influence of autistic versus alexithymic traits on neural indices of face and emotion perception.

METHODS

Capitalizing upon the temporal sensitivity of event-related potentials (ERPs), it investigates the distinct contributions of alexithymic versus autistic traits at specific stages of emotional face processing in 27 typically developing adults (18 female). ERP components reflecting sequential stages of perceptual processing (P100, N170 and N250) were recorded in response to fear and neutral faces.

RESULTS

The results indicated that autistic traits were associated with structural encoding of faces (N170), whereas alexithymic traits were associated with more complex emotion decoding (N250).

CONCLUSIONS

These findings have important implications for deconstructing heterogeneity within ASD.

Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation EEG Reveals Reduced Neural Sensitivity to Fearful Faces in Children with Autism

We objectively quantified the neural sensitivity of school-aged boys with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to detect briefly presented fearful expressions by combining fast periodic visual stimulation with frequency-tagging electroencephalography. Images of neutral faces were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with fearful expressions at 1.2 Hz oddball rate. While both groups equally display the face inversion effect and mainly rely on information from the mouth to detect fearful expressions, boys with ASD generally show reduced neural responses to rapid changes in expression. At an individual level, fear discrimination responses predict clinical status with an 83% accuracy. This implicit and straightforward approach identifies subtle deficits that remain concealed in behavioral tasks, thereby opening new perspectives for clinical diagnosis.

Within- and Cross-Modal Integration and Attention in the Autism Spectrum

Although impairment in sensory integration is suggested in the autism spectrum (AS), empirical evidences remain equivocal. We assessed the integration of low-level visual and tactile information within and across modalities in AS and typically developing (TD) individuals. TD individuals demonstrated increased redundancy gain for cross-modal relative to double tactile or visual stimulation, while AS individuals showed similar redundancy gain between cross-modal and double tactile conditions. We further observed that violation of the race model inequality for cross-modal conditions was observed over a wider proportion of the reaction times distribution in TD than AS individuals. Importantly, the reduced cross-modal integration in AS individuals was not related to atypical attentional shift between modalities. We conclude that AS individuals displays selective decrease of cross-modal integration of low-level information.

The Nature of Facial Emotion Recognition Impairments in Children on the Autism Spectrum

This study examined socio-emotional skills, utilizing a facial emotion recognition (FER) task featuring unfamiliar and familiar faces, in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) compared to typically developing (TD) children. Results showed that the TD children were more proficient on the FER overall whereas ASD children recognized familiar expressions more precisely than unfamiliar ones. Further, ASD children did not differ from TD children in recognizing happy expressions but ASD children were less skilled with recognizing negative expressions. Findings suggest that ASD children possess more adept FER abilities than previously thought especially for important social others. Ultimately, a task featuring an array of positive and negative familiar and unfamiliar expressions may provide a more comprehensive assessment of socio-emotional abilities in ASD children.

Investigating the Subcortical Route to the Amygdala Across Species and in Disordered Fear Responses

Over the past few decades, evidence has come to light that there is a rapid subcortical shortcut that transmits visual information to the amygdala, effectively bypassing the visual cortex. This pathway purportedly runs from the superior colliculus to the amygdala via the pulvinar, and thus presents a methodological challenge to study noninvasively in the human brain. Here, we present our recent work where we reliably reconstructed the white matter structure and directional flow of neural signal along this pathway in over 600 healthy young adults. Critically, we found structure-function relationships for the pulvinar-amygdala connection, where people with greater fibre density had stronger functional neural coupling and were also better at recognising fearful facial expressions. These results tie together recent anatomical evidence from other visual primates with very recent optogenetic research on rodents demonstrating a functional role of this pathway in producing fear responses. Here, we discuss how this pathway might operate alongside other thalamo-cortical circuits (such as pulvinar to middle temporal area) and how its structure and function may change according to the sensory input it receives. This newly established circuit might play a potentially important role in autism and/or anxiety disorders.

Early processing (N170) of infant faces in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder and its association with maternal sensitivity

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit impaired adult facial processing, as shown by the N170 event-related potential. However, few studies explore such processing in mothers of children with ASD, and none has assessed the early processing of infant faces in these women. Moreover, whether processing of infant facial expressions in mothers of children with ASD is related to their response to their child's needs (maternal sensitivity [MS]) remains unknown. This study explored the N170 related to infant faces in a group of mothers of children with ASD (MA) and a reference group of mothers of children without ASD. For both emotional (crying, smiling) and neutral expressions, the MA group exhibited larger amplitudes of N170 in the right hemisphere, while the reference group showed similar interhemispheric amplitudes. This lateralization effect within the MA group was not present for nonfaces and was stronger in the mothers with higher MS. We propose that mothers of ASD children use specialized perceptual resources to process infant faces, and this specialization is mediated by MS. Our findings suggest that having an ASD child modulates mothers' early neurophysiological responsiveness to infant cues. Whether this modulation represents a biological marker or a response given by experience remains to be explored. Autism Research 2019, 12: 744-758. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: When mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) see baby faces expressing emotions, they show a right-sided electrical response in the brain. This lateralization was stronger in mothers who were more sensitive to their children's needs. We conclude that having a child with ASD and being more attuned to their behavior generates a specialized pattern of brain activity when processing infant faces. Whether this pattern is biological or given by experience remains to be explored.

Happy and Angry Faces Elicit Atypical Neural Activation in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

BACKGROUND

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant impairments in social interactions and communication. The ability to accurately perceive and interpret emotional faces is critical to successful social interactions. However, few studies have investigated the spatiotemporal profile of the neural mechanisms underlying emotional face processing in ASD, particularly in children. The current study fills this important gap.

METHODS

Participants were 55 children: 28 children with ASD (mean age = 9.5 ± 1.3 years) and 27 control children (mean age = 8.5 ± 1.3 years). All children completed an implicit emotional face task while magnetoencephalography was recorded. We examined spatiotemporal differences between the groups in neural activation during implicit processing of emotional faces.

RESULTS

Within-group analyses demonstrated greater right middle temporal (300-375 ms) and superior temporal (300-400 ms) activation to angry faces than to happy faces in control children, while children with ASD showed greater activation from 250 to 500 ms to happy faces than to angry faces across frontal and temporal regions. Between-group analyses demonstrated that children with ASD showed similar patterns of late (425-500 ms) posterior cingulate and thalamic underactivity to both angry and happy faces relative to control children, suggesting general atypical processing of emotional information.

CONCLUSIONS

Atypical posterior cingulate cortex and thalamus recruitment in children with ASD to emotional faces suggests poor modulation of toggling between the default mode network and task-based processing. Increased neural activity to happy faces compared with angry faces in children with ASD suggests reduced salience or immature response to anger, which in turn could contribute to deficits in social cognition in ASD.

Perceived Intensity of Emotional Point-Light Displays is Reduced in Subjects with ASD

One major characteristic of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is problems with social interaction and communication. The present study explored ASD-related alterations in perceiving emotions expressed via body movements. 16 participants with ASD and 16 healthy controls observed video scenes of human interactions conveyed by point-light displays. They rated the valence of the depicted emotions in terms of their intensity and judged their confidence in their ratings. Results showed that healthy participants rated emotional interactions displaying positive emotionality as being more intense and were more confident about their ratings than ASD subjects. Results support the idea that patients with ASD have an altered perception of emotions. This extends research on subjective features (intensity, confidence) of emotion perception to the domain of emotional body movements and kinematics.

The Characteristics of Intelligence Profile and Eye Gaze in Facial Emotion Recognition in Mild and Moderate Preschoolers With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Childhood autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can easily be misdiagnosed, due to the nonspecific social and communicational deficits associated with the disorder. The present study attempted to profile the mental development and visual attention toward emotion among preschool children with mild or moderate ASD who were attending mainstream kindergartens. A total of 21 children (17 boys and 4 girls) diagnosed with mild or moderate ASD selected from 5,178 kindergarteners from the Xi'an city were recruited. Another group of 21 typically developing (TD) children who were matched with age, gender, and class served as controls. All children were assessed using the Griffiths Mental Development Scales-Chinese (GDS-C), and their social visual attention was assessed during watching 20 ecologically valid film scenes by using eye tracking technique. The results showed that ASD children had lower mental development scores in the Locomotor, Personal-Social, Language, Performance, and Practical Reasoning subscales than the TD peers. Moreover, deficits in recognizing emotions from facial expressions based on naturalistic scene stimuli with voice were found for ASD children. The deficits were significantly correlated with their ability in social interaction and development quotient in ASD group. ASD children showed atypical eye-gaze pattern when compared to TD children during facial emotion expression task. Children with ASD had reduced visual attention to facial emotion expression, especially for the eye region. The findings confirmed the deficits of ASD children in real life multimodal of emotion recognition, and their atypical eye-gaze pattern for emotion recognition. Parents and teachers of children with mild or moderate ASD should make informed educational decisions according to their level of mental development. In addition, eye tracking technique might clinically help provide evidence diagnosing children with mild or moderate ASD.

Functional Anatomy of the Inferior Longitudinal Fasciculus: From Historical Reports to Current Hypotheses

The inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF) is a long-range, associative white matter pathway that connects the occipital and temporal-occipital areas of the brain to the anterior temporal areas. In view of the ILF's anatomic connections, it has been suggested that this pathway has a major role in a relatively large array of brain functions. Until recently, however, the literature data on these potential functions were scarce. Here, we review the key findings of recent anatomic, neuromodulation, and neuropsychological studies. We also summarize reports on how this tract is disrupted in a wide range of brain disorders, including psychopathologic, neurodevelopmental, and neurologic diseases. Our review reveals that the ILF is a multilayered, bidirectional tract involved in processing and modulating visual cues and thus in visually guided decisions and behaviors. Accordingly, sudden disruption of the ILF by neurologic insult is mainly associated with neuropsychological impairments of visual cognition (e.g., visual agnosia, prosopagnosia, and alexia). Furthermore, disruption of the ILF may constitute the pathophysiologic basis for visual hallucinations and socio-emotional impairments in schizophrenia, as well as emotional difficulties in autism spectrum disorder. Degeneration of the ILF in neurodegenerative diseases affecting the temporal lobe may explain (at least in part) the gradual onset of semantic and lexical access difficulties. Although some of the functions mediated by the ILF appear to be relatively lateralized, observations from neurosurgery suggest that disruption of the tract's anterior portion can be dynamically compensated for by the contralateral portion. This might explain why bilateral disruption of the ILF in either acute or progressive disease is highly detrimental in neuropsychological terms.

Event related potential analysis techniques for autism spectrum disorders: A review

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) comprise all pervasive neurodevelopmental diseases marked by deficits in social and communication skills, delayed cognitive development, restricted and repetitive behaviors. The core symptoms begin in early childhood, may continue life-long resulting in poor performance in adult stage. Event-related potential (ERP) is basically a time-locked electroencephalogram signal elicited by various stimuli, related to sensory and cognitive processes. The various ERP based techniques used for the study of ASD are considered in this review. ERP based study offers the advantage of being a non-invasive technique to measure the brain activity precisely. The techniques are categorized into three based on the processing domain: time, frequency and time-frequency. Power spectral density, coherence, phase synchrony, multiscale entropy, modified multiscale entropy, sum of signed differences, synchrostates and variance are some of the measures that have been widely used to study the abnormalities in frequency bands and brain connectivity. Various signal processing techniques such as Fast Fourier Transform, Discrete Fourier Transform, Short-Time Fourier Transform, Principal Component Analysis, Wavelet Transform, Directed Transfer Function etc. have been used to analyze the recorded signals so as to unravel the distinctive event-related potential patterns in individuals with ASD. The review concludes that ERP proves to be an efficient tool in detecting the brain abnormalities and connectivity issues, indicating the heterogeneity of ASD. Many advanced techniques are utilized to decipher the underlying neural circuitry so as to aid in therapeutic interventions for improving the core areas of deficits.

Closed Loop Deep Brain Stimulation for PTSD, Addiction, and Disorders of Affective Facial Interpretation: Review and Discussion of Potential Biomarkers and Stimulation Paradigms

The treatment of psychiatric diseases with Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is becoming more of a reality as studies proliferate the indications and targets for therapies. Opinions on the initial failures of DBS trials for some psychiatric diseases point to a certain lack of finesse in using an Open Loop DBS (OLDBS) system in these dynamic, cyclical pathologies. OLDBS delivers monomorphic input into dysfunctional brain circuits with modulation of that input via human interface at discrete time points with no interim modulation or adaptation to the changing circuit dynamics. Closed Loop DBS (CLDBS) promises dynamic, intrinsic circuit modulation based on individual physiologic biomarkers of dysfunction. Discussed here are several psychiatric diseases which may be amenable to CLDBS paradigms as the neurophysiologic dysfunction is stochastic and not static. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has several peripheral and central physiologic and neurologic changes preceding stereotyped hyper-activation behavioral responses. Biomarkers for CLDBS potentially include skin conductance changes indicating changes in the sympathetic nervous system, changes in serum and central neurotransmitter concentrations, and limbic circuit activation. Chemical dependency and addiction have been demonstrated to be improved with both ablation and DBS of the Nucleus Accumbens and as a serendipitous side effect of movement disorder treatment. Potential peripheral biomarkers are similar to those proposed for PTSD with possible use of environmental and geolocation based cues, peripheral signs of physiologic arousal, and individual changes in central circuit patterns. Non-substance addiction disorders have also been serendipitously treated in patients with OLDBS for movement disorders. As more is learned about these behavioral addictions, DBS targets and effectors will be identified. Finally, discussed is the use of facial recognition software to modulate activation of inappropriate responses for psychiatric diseases in which misinterpretation of social cues feature prominently. These include Autism Spectrum Disorder, PTSD, and Schizophrenia-all of which have a common feature of dysfunctional interpretation of facial affective clues. Technological advances and improvements in circuit-based, individual-specific, real-time adaptable modulation, forecast functional neurosurgery treatments for heretofore treatment-resistant behavioral diseases.

Facial expression recognition as a candidate marker for autism spectrum disorder: how frequent and severe are deficits?

Background

Impairments in social communication are a core feature of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Because the ability to infer other people’s emotions from their facial expressions is critical for many aspects of social communication, deficits in expression recognition are a plausible candidate marker for ASD. However, previous studies on facial expression recognition produced mixed results, which may be due to differences in the sensitivity of the many tests used and/or the heterogeneity among individuals with ASD. To ascertain whether expression recognition may serve as a diagnostic marker (which distinguishes people with ASD from a comparison group) or a stratification marker (which helps to divide ASD into more homogeneous subgroups), a crucial first step is to move beyond identification of mean group differences and to better understand the frequency and severity of impairments.

Methods

This study tested 46 individuals with ASD and 52 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) participants on the Films Expression Task, which combines three key features of real-life expression recognition: naturalistic facial expressions, a broad range of simple and complex emotions, and short presentation time. Test-retest reliability was assessed in 28 individuals who did not participate in the main study and revealed acceptable reliability (ICC r = .74).

Results

Case-control comparisons showed highly significant mean group differences for accuracy (p = 1.1 × 10^− 10), with an effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.6), more than twice as large as the mean effect size reported in a previous meta-analysis (Uljarevic and Hamilton, 2012, J Autism Dev Disord). The ASD group also had significantly increased mean reaction times overall (p = .00015, d = .83) and on correct trials (p = .0002, d = .78). However, whereas 63% of people with ASD showed severe deficits (they performed below two standard deviations of the TD mean, a small subgroup (15.3%) performed normally (within one standard deviation of the mean).

Conclusion

These findings indicate that the majority of people with ASD have severe expression recognition deficits and that the Films Expression Test is a sensitive task for biomarker research in ASD. Future work is needed to establish whether ASD subgroups with and without expression recognition deficits differ from one another in terms of their symptom profile or neurobiological underpinnings.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s13229-018-0187-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Relationship Between Early Neural Responses to Emotional Faces at Age 3 and Later Autism and Anxiety Symptoms in Adolescents with Autism

Both autism spectrum (ASD) and anxiety disorders are associated with atypical neural and attentional responses to emotional faces, differing in affective face processing from typically developing peers. Within a longitudinal study of children with ASD (23 male, 3 female), we hypothesized that early ERPs to emotional faces would predict concurrent and later ASD and anxiety symptoms. Greater response amplitude to fearful faces corresponded to greater social communication difficulties at age 3, and less improvement by age 14. Faster ERPs to neutral faces predicted greater ASD symptom improvement over time, lower ASD severity in adolescence, and lower anxiety in adolescence. Early individual differences in processing of emotional stimuli likely reflect a unique predictive contribution from social brain circuitry early in life.

Priming Facial Gender and Emotional Valence: The Influence of Spatial Frequency on Face Perception in ASD

Adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed two priming experiments in which they implicitly processed a prime stimulus, containing high and/or low spatial frequency information, and then explicitly categorized a target face either as male/female (gender task) or as positive/negative (Valence task). Adolescents with ASD made more categorization errors than typically developing adolescents. They also showed an age-dependent improvement in categorization speed and had more difficulties with categorizing facial expressions than gender. However, in neither of the categorization tasks, we found group differences in the processing of coarse versus fine prime information. This contradicted our expectations, and indicated that the perceptual differences between adolescents with and without ASD critically depended on the processing time available for the primes.

What Difference Does It Make? Implicit, Explicit and Complex Social Cognition in Autism Spectrum Disorders

We tested social cognition abilities of adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and neurotypically developed peers (NTD). A multi-faceted test-battery including facial emotion categorization (FEC), classical false belief tasks (FBT), and complex social cognition (SC), yielded significantly lower accuracy rates for FEC and complex SC tasks in ASD, but no significant differences in performance concerning FBT. A significant correlation between age and performance in a FEC task and in a complex task was found only in ASD. We propose that dynamic and/or fragmented FEC tasks can elicit deficits in implicit processing of facial emotion more efficiently. The difficulties of ASD in solving complex SC tasks can be ascribed to deficits in the acquisition and application of social schemata.

White matter compromise in autism? Differentiating motion confounds from true differences in diffusion tensor imaging

Common findings from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) include reduced fractional anisotropy (FA), and increased mean and radial diffusivity (MD, RD) of white matter tracts. However, findings may be confounded by head motion. We examined how group-level motion matching affects DTI comparisons between ASD and typically developing (TD) groups. We included 57 ASD and 50 TD participants, comparing three subsets at increasing levels of motion-matching stringency: full sample (FS); quality-controlled (QC); and quantitatively-matched (QM). Groups were compared on diffusivity measures using Tract-Based Spatial Statistics (TBSS) and probabilistic tractography. Two methods for estimating diffusivity were compared: dti-fit and restore. TBSS: In set FS, FA was reduced in the ASD compared to the TD group throughout the right hemisphere. This effect was less extensive in set QC and absent in set QM. However, effect sizes remained stable or increased with better quality-control in some regions. Tractography: In set QM, MD was significantly higher in ASD overall and RD was higher in bilateral ILF. Effects were more robust in QM than in FS or QC sets. Effect sizes in several tracts increased with stringent quality matching. Restore improved tensor estimates, with some increases in effect sizes, but did not fully compensate for reduced quality. Findings suggest that some previously reported DTI findings for ASD may have been confounded by motion. However, effects in the tightly matched subset indicate that tract-specific anomalies probably do exist in ASD. Our results highlight the need for careful quality-control and motion-matching. Autism Res 2017, 10: 1606-1620. © 2017 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.