Differences in neural activity when processing emotional arousal and valence in autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often have difficulty recognizing and interpreting facial expressions of emotion, which may impair their ability to navigate and communicate successfully in their social, interpersonal environments. Characterizing specific differences between individuals with ASD and their typically-developing (TD) counterparts in the neural activity subserving their experience of emotional faces may provide distinct targets for ASD interventions. Thus we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a parametric experimental design to identify brain regions in which neural activity correlated with ratings of arousal and valence for a broad range of emotional faces. Participants (51 ASD, 84 TD) were group-matched by age, sex, IQ, race, and socioeconomic status. Using task-related change in blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) fMRI signal as a measure, and covarying for age, sex, FSIQ, and ADOS scores, we detected significant differences across diagnostic groups in the neural activity subserving the dimension of arousal but not valence. BOLD-signal in TD participants correlated inversely with ratings of arousal in regions associated primarily with attentional functions, whereas BOLD-signal in ASD participants correlated positively with arousal ratings in regions commonly associated with impulse control and default-mode activity. Only minor differences were detected between groups in the BOLD signal correlates of valence ratings. Our findings provide unique insight into the emotional experiences of individuals with ASD. Although behavioral responses to face-stimuli were comparable across diagnostic groups, the corresponding neural activity for our ASD and TD groups differed dramatically. The near absence of group differences for valence correlates and the presence of strong group differences for arousal correlates suggest that individuals with ASD are not atypical in all aspects of emotion-processing. Studying these similarities and differences may help us to understand the origins of divergent interpersonal emotional experience in persons with ASD.

Cortical responses to dynamic emotional facial expressions generalize across stimuli, and are sensitive to task-relevance, in adults with and without Autism

“…Multivariate analyses can detect both differences in the average response over whole brain regions, like traditional univariate measures, but are also sensitive to relative differences in the spatial patterns of response. In typically developing adults, many cortical regions show similar overall magnitude, but distinct spatial patterns, of activity in response to positive versus negative facial expressions (Tseng et al, 2016). In the few previous studies using MVPA in participants with ASD, MVPA revealed differences in social information processing in individuals with ASD that were not detected with univariate methods (Coutanche et al, 2011; Gilbert, Meuwese, Towgood, Frith, & Burgess, 2009; Koster-Hale et al, 2013).…”

Electrophysiological Correlates of Subliminal Perception of Facial Expressions in Individuals with Autistic Traits: A Backward Masking Study

“…In addition, understanding of automatic emotion processing in the disorder can provide better understanding and clarification of specificity of emotion processing in this group. The importance of understanding various aspects of emotion processing is particularly evident from a recent study (Tseng et al, 2016 ) that showed differences in neural activity for arousal but not valence on emotion processing between subjects with autism and neurotypically developing subjects.…”

The interpersonal effects of distinct emotions in online reviews

“…In the context of an online (restaurant) review, disgust is a very relevant and often-communicated emotion (Ahmad & Laroche, 2015). It is considered a high arousal emotion (Tseng et al, 2016) that, like anger, can be perceived as a moral emotion (Hutcherson & Gross, 2011). Disgust may be appropriate to communicate in the context of an online review about a restaurant experience, as it is often expressed in response to both food intake (Rozin et al, 1999) and service encounters (Johnson & Zinkhan, 1991).…”