Molecular and Biochemistry Pharmacology Program, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.
Braz J Psychiatry. 2011 Sep;33(3):261-7. doi: 10.1590/s1516-44462011000300009.
A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism and that this impairment might be hereditary. This study was aimed at assessing facial emotion recognition in parents of children with autism and its associations with a functional polymorphism of the serotonin transporter (5HTTLPR).
We evaluated 40 parents of children with autism and 41 healthy controls. All participants were administered the Penn Emotion Recognition Test (ER40) and were genotyped for 5HTTLPR.
Our study showed that parents of children with autism performed worse in the facial emotion recognition test than controls. Analyses of error patterns showed that parents of children with autism over-attributed neutral to emotional faces. We found evidence that 5HTTLPR polymorphism did not influence the performance in the Penn Emotion Recognition Test, but that it may determine different error patterns.
Facial emotion recognition deficits are more common in first-degree relatives of autistic patients than in the general population, suggesting that facial emotion recognition is a candidate endophenotype for autism.
大量证据表明，自闭症患者在面部处理的多个方面存在障碍，而这种障碍可能是遗传性的。本研究旨在评估自闭症儿童的父母的面部情绪识别能力及其与 5-羟色胺转运体（5HTTLPR）功能多态性的关系。
我们评估了 40 名自闭症儿童的父母和 41 名健康对照者。所有参与者均接受了宾夕法尼亚面部情绪识别测试（ER40）和 5HTTLPR 基因分型。
我们的研究表明，自闭症儿童的父母在面部情绪识别测试中的表现逊于对照组。错误模式分析表明，自闭症儿童的父母会将中性表情归因于情绪面孔。我们发现，5HTTLPR 多态性并不影响宾夕法尼亚面部情绪识别测试的表现，但它可能决定了不同的错误模式。
自闭症患者的一级亲属比普通人群更常见面部情绪识别缺陷，这表明面部情绪识别是自闭症的候选内表型。
