Insensitivity to Fearful Emotion for Early ERP Components in High Autistic Tendency Is Associated with Lower Magnocellular Efficiency.

Adelaide Burt,Laila Hugrass,Tash Frith-Belvedere,David Crewther

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2017.00495

Adelaide Burt, Laila Hugrass + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00495

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Abstract

Low spatial frequency (LSF) visual information is extracted rapidly from fearful faces, suggesting magnocellular involvement. Autistic phenotypes demonstrate altered magnocellular processing, which we propose contributes to a decreased P100 evoked response to LSF fearful faces. Here, we investigated whether rapid processing of fearful facial expressions differs for groups of neurotypical adults with low and high scores on the Autistic Spectrum Quotient (AQ). We created hybrid face stimuli with low and high spatial frequency filtered, fearful, and neutral expressions. Fearful faces produced higher amplitude P100 responses than neutral faces in the low AQ group, particularly when the hybrid face contained a LSF fearful expression. By contrast, there was no effect of fearful expression on P100 amplitude in the high AQ group. Consistent with evidence linking magnocellular differences with autistic personality traits, our non-linear VEP results showed that the high AQ group had higher amplitude K2.1 responses than the low AQ group, which is indicative of less efficient magnocellular recovery. Our results suggest that magnocellular LSF processing of a human face may be the initial visual cue used to rapidly and automatically detect fear, but that this cue functions atypically in those with high autistic tendency.

Highlights

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a broad group of disorders, characterized by impairments in communication and social awareness, and by repetitive stereotyped behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)
De Jong et al (2008) investigated the effects of gaze cueing on ERPs and found that for neurotypical observers, gaze cueing had a stronger effect on ERPs for Low spatial frequency (LSF) filtered faces; whereas for autistic observers, cueing effects were stronger for high spatial frequency (HSF) filtered faces. These findings indicate that the P100 and N170 responses to fearful emotional faces may be affected in individuals with high autistic tendency
Means and standard deviations for the low and high Autistic Spectrum Quotient (AQ) groups are presented in Figure 4, with comparisons for P100 amplitude and latency, N170 amplitude and latency, and behavioral performance

Summary

Introduction

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a broad group of disorders, characterized by impairments in communication and social awareness, and by repetitive stereotyped behaviors (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). In addition to these well-known impairments, there are some differences in perceptual functioning, in the visual domain (Dakin and Frith, 2005; Kellerman et al, 2005; Pellicano et al, 2005; Dale and Salt, 2008; McCleery et al, 2009; Simmons et al, 2009) These perceptual differences extend to the neurotypical population (Almeida et al, 2010; Sutherland and Crewther, 2010; Jackson et al, 2013) for individuals with high scores on the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) personality scale (Baron-Cohen et al, 2001). Detection of potentially threatening stimuli, such as fearful or angry faces involves a distributed network of cortical and subcortical regions (LeDoux, 1998; Johnson, 2005; Kragel et al, 2016).

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