Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 9 Flowers Drive, Durham, North Carolina, 27708-0086, USA.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2007 Jun;2(2):140-9. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsm010.
Despite elegant behavioral descriptions of abnormalities for processing emotional facial expressions and biological motion in autism, identification of the neural mechanisms underlying these abnormalities remains a critical and largely unmet challenge. We compared brain activity with dynamic and static facial expressions in participants with and without high-functioning autism using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and three classes of face stimuli-emotion morphs (fearful and angry), identity morphs and static images (fearful, angry and neutral). We observed reduced activity in the amygdala (AMY) and fusiform gyrus (FFG) to dynamic emotional expressions in people with autism. There was also a lack of modulation by dynamic compared with static emotional expressions of social brain regions including the AMY, posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) region and FFG. We observed equivalent emotion and identity morph-evoked activity in participants with and without autism in a region corresponding to the expected location of the more generally motion-sensitive area MT or V5. We conclude that dysfunctions in key components of the human face processing system including the AMY, FFG and posterior STS region are present in individuals with high-functioning autism, and this dysfunction might contribute to the deficits in processing emotional facial expressions.
尽管在自闭症中对处理情绪面部表情和生物运动的异常行为有优雅的描述，但确定这些异常的神经机制仍然是一个关键且未得到充分满足的挑战。我们使用事件相关功能磁共振成像 (fMRI) 和三类面部刺激 - 情感渐变（恐惧和愤怒）、身份渐变和静态图像（恐惧、愤怒和中性），比较了有和没有高功能自闭症的参与者的大脑活动。我们观察到自闭症患者对动态情绪表情的杏仁核（AMY）和梭状回（FFG）活动减少。与动态情绪表情相比，社会大脑区域（包括 AMY、后颞上沟（STS）区域和 FFG）的活动也缺乏调节。我们观察到在对应于更普遍的运动敏感区域 MT 或 V5 的预期位置的区域中，自闭症患者和非自闭症患者的情绪和身份渐变引起的活动相当。我们的结论是，包括杏仁核、FFG 和后 STS 区域在内的人类面部处理系统的关键组成部分在高功能自闭症个体中存在功能障碍，这种功能障碍可能导致处理情绪面部表情的缺陷。
