Sungmo-Maum Psychiatric Clinic, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Neuroscience Research Institute, Gachon University of Medicine and Science, Incheon, Republic of Korea.
Psychiatry Investig. 2015 Jan;12(1):37-45. doi: 10.4306/pi.2015.12.1.37. Epub 2014 Oct 30.
The aim of this study is to investigate abnormal findings of social brain network in Korean children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) compared with typically developing children (TDC).
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed to examine brain activations during the processing of emotional faces (happy, fearful, and neutral) in 17 children with ASD, 24 TDC.
When emotional face stimuli were given to children with ASD, various areas of the social brain relevant to social cognition showed reduced activation. Specifically, ASD children exhibited less activation in the right amygdala (AMY), right superior temporal sulcus (STS) and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) than TDC group when fearful faces were shown. Activation of left insular cortex and right IFG in response to happy faces was less in the ASD group. Similar findings were also found in left superior insular gyrus and right insula in case of neutral stimulation.
These findings suggest that children with ASD have different processing of social and emotional experience at the neural level. In other words, the deficit of social cognition in ASD could be explained by the deterioration of the capacity for visual analysis of emotional faces, the subsequent inner imitation through mirror neuron system (MNS), and the ability to transmit it to the limbic system and to process the transmitted emotion.
本研究旨在探讨与典型发育儿童（TDC）相比，自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）韩国儿童社会脑网络的异常发现。
对 17 名 ASD 儿童和 24 名 TDC 儿童进行功能磁共振成像（fMRI），以检查他们在处理情绪面孔（快乐、恐惧和中性）时大脑的激活情况。
当向 ASD 儿童呈现情绪面孔刺激时，与社会认知相关的各种社会脑区域的激活减少。具体来说，与 TDC 组相比，当呈现恐惧面孔时，ASD 儿童右侧杏仁核（AMY）、右侧颞上沟（STS）和右侧额下回（IFG）的激活减少。与中性刺激相比，ASD 组在对快乐面孔的反应中，左侧岛叶皮质和右侧 IFG 的激活减少。在左侧上岛叶和右侧岛叶也发现了类似的发现。
这些发现表明，ASD 儿童在神经水平上对社会和情感体验有不同的处理方式。换句话说，ASD 中的社会认知缺陷可以通过视觉分析情绪面孔能力的恶化、随后通过镜像神经元系统（MNS）进行的内在模仿以及将其传递到边缘系统并处理传递的情绪的能力来解释。
