Abstract
Deficits in the visual processing of faces in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals may be due to atypical brain organization and function. Studies assessing asymmetric brain function in ASD individuals have suggested that facial processing, which is known to be lateralized in neurotypical (NT) individuals, may be less lateralized in ASD. Here we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to first test this theory by comparing patterns of lateralized brain activity in homologous temporal-occipital facial processing regions during observation of faces in an ASD group and an NT group. As expected, the ASD participants showed reduced right hemisphere asymmetry for human faces, compared to the NT participants. Based on recent behavioral reports suggesting that robots can facilitate increased verbal interaction over human counterparts in ASD, we also measured responses to faces of robots to determine if these patterns of activation were lateralized in each group. In this exploratory test, both groups showed similar asymmetry patterns for the robot faces. Our findings confirm existing literature suggesting reduced asymmetry for human faces in ASD and provide a preliminary foundation for future testing of how the use of categorically different social stimuli in the clinical setting may be beneficial in this population.
Highlights
Distinct cognitive and behavioral deficits observed in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may be attributed to altered patterns of functional hemispheric asymmetry[1]
Atypical patterns of asymmetry have been identified in ASD, but most of these studies have only investigated asymmetry for language processing, which is generally left lateralized in NT individuals [4]
After excluding all the channels due to poor signals, we found that the number of channels excluded in each group did not significantly differ (NT channel exclusions: M = 1.25, SE = .392; ASD channel exclusions: M = 1.5, SE = .378; t(18) = -.437, p = .389)
Summary
Distinct cognitive and behavioral deficits observed in ASD may be attributed to altered patterns of functional hemispheric asymmetry[1]. FNIRS is a useful method for measuring and comparing cortical activation patterns in children and special populations because it allows participants to sit openly in a chair without being confined within a scanner or exposed to a magnetic field and loud noises This noninvasive imaging technique has been used in individuals with ASD to assess interhemispheric connectivity during the resting state [32], and in prefrontal areas [33]and has suggested reduced connectivity in this population. In this preliminary experiment, we used fNIRS to compare the degree of asymmetry in the temporal-occipital regions in an ASD and an NT group for tasks that required processing of both human and robot faces. Comparing patterns of activation for the robot faces in both groups could provide preliminary support for the successful use of robots in a clinical setting and encourage more effective methods of stimulating interaction
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