Neural Mechanisms of Facial Emotion Recognition in Autism: Distinct Roles for Anterior Cingulate and dlPFC

Autor: John A. Richey, Denis Gracanin, Stephen LaConte, Jonathan Lisinski, Inyoung Kim, Marika Coffman, Ligia Antezana, Corinne N. Carlton, Katelyn M. Garcia, Susan W. White
Rok vydání: 2023
Předmět:
Zdroj: J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol
ISSN: 1537-4424
Popis: OBJECTIVE: The present study sought to measure and internally validate neural markers of facial emotion recognition (FER) in adolescents and young adults with ASD to inform targeted intervention. METHOD: We utilized fMRI to measure patterns of brain activity among individuals with ASD (N=21) and matched controls (CON; N=20) two seconds prior to judgements about the identity of six distinct facial emotions (happy, sad, angry, surprised, fearful, disgust). RESULTS: Predictive modeling of fMRI data (support vector classification; SVC) identified mechanistic roles for brain regions that forecasted correct and incorrect identification of facial emotion as well as sources of errors over these decisions. BOLD signal activation in bilateral insula, anterior cingulate (ACC) and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) preceded accurate FER in both controls and ASD. Predictive modeling utilizing SVC confirmed the utility of ACC in forecasting correct decisions in controls but not ASD, and further indicated that a region within the right dlPFC was the source of a type 1 error signal in ASD (i.e. neural marker reflecting an impending correct judgment followed by an incorrect behavioral response) approximately two seconds prior to emotion judgements during fMRI. CONCLUSIONS: ACC forecasted correct decisions only among control participants. Right dlPFC was the source of a false positive signal immediately prior to an error about the nature of a facial emotion in adolescents and young adults with ASD, potentially consistent with prior work indicating that dlPFC may play a role in attention to and regulation of emotional experience.
Databáze: OpenAIRE