South Mikle, Ozonoff Sally, Suchy Yana, Kesner Raymond P, McMahon William M, Lainhart Janet E
Department of Psychology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.
J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2008 Jan;14(1):42-54. doi: 10.1017/S1355617708080107.
Atypical amygdala development may play a key role in the emergence of social disability and other symptoms of autism (Baron-Cohen et al., 2000; Schultz, 2005). The mechanisms by which this may occur have received little attention, however, and most support from behavioral and imaging studies has been concerned with socially relevant stimuli such as faces. Given the complexity of amygdala function and its known role in many other emotional tasks, we examined whether individuals with autism would demonstrate impaired performance on several tasks that have been shown to require activation of the amygdala but that do not have any explicit social meaning. Relative to a typical comparison group matched for age and IQ, our sample of 37 adolescents and adults with autism (mean age=19.7 years) demonstrated equivalent facilitation for perception and learning of emotionally relevant stimuli. On each of four tasks, there were significant main effects of emotion condition on performance for both groups. Future research regarding atypical amygdala function and emotion processing in autism should consider whether the response to nonsocial emotion factors (including negative valence or high arousal) may be intact, despite difficulties in responding to socially relevant stimuli.
非典型的杏仁核发育可能在社交障碍及自闭症的其他症状出现过程中起关键作用（Baron-Cohen等人，2000年；Schultz，2005年）。然而，这种情况可能发生的机制却很少受到关注，并且行为和成像研究的大多数支持都集中在诸如面孔等与社交相关的刺激上。鉴于杏仁核功能的复杂性及其在许多其他情感任务中的已知作用，我们研究了自闭症个体在几项已被证明需要激活杏仁核但没有任何明确社交意义的任务上是否会表现出受损的表现。相对于年龄和智商匹配的典型对照组，我们的37名自闭症青少年和成年人样本（平均年龄=19.7岁）在对与情感相关刺激的感知和学习方面表现出同等程度的促进作用。在四项任务中的每一项上，情绪状况对两组的表现都有显著的主效应。关于自闭症中非典型杏仁核功能和情绪处理的未来研究应考虑，尽管在对与社交相关的刺激做出反应方面存在困难，但对非社交情绪因素（包括负性效价或高唤醒）的反应是否可能是完整的。
