Abstract
BackgroundSocio-emotional difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to reflect impaired functional connectivity within the “social brain”. Nonetheless, a whole-brain characterization of the fast responses in functional connectivity during implicit processing of emotional faces in adults with ASD is lacking.MethodsThe present study used magnetoencephalography to investigate early responses in functional connectivity, as measured by interregional phase synchronization, during implicit processing of angry, neutral and happy faces. The sample (n = 44) consisted of 22 young adults with ASD and 22 age- and sex-matched typically developed (TD) controls.ResultsReduced phase-synchrony in the beta band around 300 ms emerged during processing of angry faces in the ASD compared to TD group, involving key areas of the social brain. In the same time window, de-synchronization in the beta band in the amygdala was reduced in the ASD group across conditions.ConclusionsThis is the first demonstration of atypical global and local synchrony patterns in the social brain in adults with ASD during implicit processing of emotional faces. The present results replicate and substantially extend previous findings on adolescents, highlighting that atypical brain synchrony during processing of socio-emotional stimuli is a hallmark of clinical sequelae in autism.
Highlights
Socio-emotional difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to reflect impaired functional connectivity within the “social brain”
Based on the large literature on typically developed (TD) and ASD individuals and the importance of amygdalae and insulae in processing of emotional faces [51], we focused on these seeds
Our results largely converge with recent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings which reported reduced connectivity between limbic and cortical regions of the social brain in ASD compared to TD individuals, during both explicit [27] and implicit [28] processing of emotional faces
Summary
Socio-emotional difficulties in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to reflect impaired functional connectivity within the “social brain”. Dysfunctional emotional processing and an impaired ability to recognize others’ emotions correctly have been related to disturbances in functional connectivity among brain areas important to assessing stimuli’s salience [13, 14]. In autism, this is thought to reflect atypical maturation of the “social brain”, a network of brain areas which shows co-activation across social tasks [15, 16]. The social brain includes limbic and paralimbic regions which code for different aspects of emotional
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