When the Brain Cares: Personal interests amplify engagement of language, self-reference, and reward regions in the brains of children with and without autism

Abstract

Behavioral investigations have found that personal interests can profoundly influence language-relevant behaviors; however, the influence of personal interest on language processing in the brain is unknown. We measured brain activation via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in 20 children while they listened to personalized narratives written about their specific interests, as well as to non-personalized narratives about a neutral topic. Multiple cortical language regions, as well as select cortical and subcortical regions associated with reward and salience, exhibited greater activation for personally-interesting than neutral narratives. There was also more overlap in activation patterns across individuals for their personally-interesting narratives than neutral narratives, despite the personalized narratives being unique to each individual. These results replicated in a group of 15 children with autism, a condition characterized by both specific interests and difficulties with communication, suggesting that personally-interesting narratives may impact neural language processing even amidst challenges with language and social communication. These findings reveal that engagement with topics that are personally interesting can significantly affect activation in the neocortical and subcortical regions that subserve language, reward, and salience in the brains of children.