Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 May 21;10(1):8396. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-65345-x.
Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have been linked to aberrant reward processing, but it remains unclear whether it is a general dysfunction or limited to social stimuli, and whether it affects both phases of reward processing, namely anticipation and reception. We used event-related brain potentials and a population-based approach to investigate reward anticipation and reception to socially relevant (i.e., picture of experimenter's face showing approval/disapproval) and monetary rewards in 51 neurotypical individuals with varying levels of autistic traits. Higher autistic traits were associated with enhanced reward anticipation across reward types in the early anticipation phase (triggered by incentive cues), but not in the late anticipation phase (directly before reward reception), as reflected by the CNV component. The P3 component in response to reward reception showed a general increase for monetary outcomes, which was not modulated by autistic traits. These results suggest that higher autistic traits are related to enhanced reward anticipation, but do not modulate reward reception. No interaction between reward types and autistic traits was observed. We propose that the relevance of social rewards had higher reward value than commonly used pictures of strangers, which specifically normalised responses for individuals with high autistic traits.
自闭症谱系条件（ASC）与异常的奖励处理有关，但尚不清楚它是普遍功能障碍还是仅限于社会刺激，以及它是否影响奖励处理的两个阶段，即预期和接收。我们使用事件相关脑电位和基于人群的方法，在 51 名具有不同自闭症特征水平的神经典型个体中，研究了对社会相关（即实验者面部的图片表示赞成/反对）和货币奖励的奖励预期和接收。较高的自闭症特征与各种奖励类型的早期预期阶段（由激励线索触发）的奖励预期增强有关，但与晚期预期阶段（直接在奖励接收之前）无关，这反映在 CNV 成分中。对奖励接收的 P3 成分显示出对货币结果的普遍增加，而自闭症特征并没有调节。这些结果表明，较高的自闭症特征与增强的奖励预期有关，但不会调节奖励接收。未观察到奖励类型和自闭症特征之间的相互作用。我们提出，社会奖励的相关性比通常使用的陌生人图片具有更高的奖励价值，这特别为高自闭症特征的个体规范了反应。
