Background
People with Asperger syndrome (AS) have life-long deficits in social behavior. The
biological basis of this is unknown, but most likely includes impaired processing
of facial emotion. Human social communication involves processing different facial
emotions, and at different intensities. However nobody has examined brain function
in people with AS when implicitly (unconsciously) processing four primary emotions
at varying emotional intensities.
Methods
We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine neural
responses when people with AS and controls implicitly processed neutral expressions,
and mild (25%) and intense (100%) expressions of fear, disgust, happiness, and sadness.
We included 18 right-handed adults; 9 with AS and 9 healthy controls who did not differ
significantly in IQ.
Results
Both groups significantly activated ‘face perception' areas when viewing neutral faces,
including fusiform and extrastriate cortices. Further, both groups had significantly
increased activation of fusiform and other extrastriate regions to increasing intensities
of fear and happiness. However, people with AS generally showed fusiform and extrastriate
hyporesponsiveness compared to controls across emotion types and intensities.
Conclusions
Fusiform and extrastriate cortices are activated by facial expressions of four primary
emotions in people with AS, but generally to a lesser degree than controls. This may
partly explain the social impairments of people with AS.
Key Words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 02, 2007
Accepted:
September 22,
2006
Received in revised form:
May 3,
2006
Received:
January 3,
2006
Identification
Copyright
© 2007 Society of Biological Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
