Activation of the fusiform gyrus when individuals with autism spectrum disorder view faces

Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Joseph, Robert M.; Snyder, James W.; Chabris, Christopher F.; Clark, Jill; Steele, Shelly D.; McGrath, Lauren M.; Vangel, Mark; Aharon, Itzhak; Feczko, Eric; Harris, Gordon J.; Tager–Flusberg, Helen

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.03.025

Cited by 301 publications

(251 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…We believe it unlikely that the participants ignored our instruction about the fixation because they followed other instructions very well. However, further study with precise recording of the fixations of participants will be required since control of fixation can affect the brain activity in response to the face processing (e.g., Hadjikhani et al, 2004). Third, the lack of non-autistic clinical controls made it difficult to determine whether such deviant ERPs in response to gaze processing are specific to autism.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These atypical patterns of eye gaze processing are assumed to be relevant to the characteristic social and communicative developmental deficits of this disorder in the current 'theory of mind' or 'social brain' hypothesis (BaronCohen, 1995). However, while several studies have found atypical neural activation while perceiving faces Pierce, Miller, Ambrose, Allen, & Courchesne, 2001;Schultz et al, 2000, but see also Hadjikhani et al, 2004), identifying faces , and processing facial emotion (Critchley et al, 2000), to date very little is known about the neural bases of eye gaze processing in individuals with autism.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Deviant gaze processing in children with autism: an ERP study

et al. 2005

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deviant gaze processing in children with autism: an ERP study

et al. 2005

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“…From the process-map perspective, this apparent failure of individuals with ASD to develop normal cortical face specialization in the FFA and ''expertise'' in face recognition may be the accumulated effect of reduced social interest and lack of motivation to view faces [160,161]. However, other studies variously found FFA activation by faces that was modulated by personal familiarity in ASD [162], or FFA activation that was not distinguishable from controls [163] or FFA activation that was differentially modulated by task among ASD subjects, compared to controls [164].…”

Section: Ffa and Face Processing In Asdmentioning

confidence: 97%

Autism and the development of face processing

Golarai

Grill-Spector

Reiss

2006

Clinical Neuroscience Research

154

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Autism is a pervasive developmental condition, characterized by impairments in non-verbal communication, social relationships and stereotypical patterns of behavior. A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism, including anomalies in gaze processing, memory for facial identity and recognition of facial expressions of emotion. In search of neural markers of anomalous face processing in autism, much interest has focused on a network of brain regions that are implicated in social cognition and face processing. In this review, we will focus on three such regions, namely the STS for its role in processing gaze and facial movements, the FFA in face detection and identification and the amygdala in processing facial expressions of emotion. Much evidence suggests that a better understanding of the normal development of these specialized regions is essential for discovering the neural bases of face processing anomalies in autism. Thus, we will also examine the available literature on the normal development of face processing. Key unknowns in this research area are the neuro-developmental processes, the role of experience and the interactions among components of the face processing system in shaping each of the specialized regions for processing faces during normal development and in autism. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.

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“…Third, given the well-documented tendency of individuals with ASD to avoid looking at faces, any failure to find FFAs in subjects with ASD may result from the failure of the subjects to look at the stimuli during the scans (!). Indeed, studies that required subjects to fixate faces found normal face activation in the fusiform gyrus in subjects with ASD (Hadjikhani et al 2004;Dalton et al 2005). Thus, current investigations of FFAs in ASD subjects do not help us understand the developmental mechanisms by which FFAs are constructed.…”

Section: Open Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

Kanwisher

Yovel

2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

1,382

989

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Faces are among the most important visual stimuli we perceive, informing us not only about a person's identity, but also about their mood, sex, age and direction of gaze. The ability to extract this information within a fraction of a second of viewing a face is important for normal social interactions and has probably played a critical role in the survival of our primate ancestors. Considerable evidence from behavioural, neuropsychological and neurophysiological investigations supports the hypothesis that humans have specialized cognitive and neural mechanisms dedicated to the perception of faces (the face-specificity hypothesis). Here, we review the literature on a region of the human brain that appears to play a key role in face perception, known as the fusiform face area (FFA).Section 1 outlines the theoretical background for much of this work. The face-specificity hypothesis falls squarely on one side of a longstanding debate in the fields of cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience concerning the extent to which the mind/brain is composed of: (i) special-purpose ('domain-specific') mechanisms, each dedicated to processing a specific kind of information (e.g. faces, according to the face-specificity hypothesis), versus (ii) general-purpose ('domain-general') mechanisms, each capable of operating on any kind of information. Face perception has long served both as one of the prime candidates of a domain-specific process and as a key target for attack by proponents of domain-general theories of brain and mind. Section 2 briefly reviews the prior literature on face perception from behaviour and neurophysiology. This work supports the face-specificity hypothesis and argues against its domain-general alternatives (the individuation hypothesis, the expertise hypothesis and others).Section 3 outlines the more recent evidence on this debate from brain imaging, focusing particularly on the FFA. We review the evidence that the FFA is selectively engaged in face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect).Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in §6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the ques...

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Activation of the fusiform gyrus when individuals with autism spectrum disorder view faces

Cited by 301 publications

References 62 publications

Deviant gaze processing in children with autism: an ERP study

Deviant gaze processing in children with autism: an ERP study

Autism and the development of face processing

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

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