Emotion Production and Neural Correlates of Emotion Processing in Youths With Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Functional MRI Study

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits in social communication and social processing. Previous research indicates that individuals with ASD have abnormal neural responses to observing emotional expressions (Dapretto et al., 2006), and atypical emotional expression production (Trevisan et al., 2018). To date, no research has examined how emotional face perception (EFP) relates to the accuracy or quality of emotional expressions made (EE) by individuals with ASD. The aim of this study is to relate neural responses when observing facial expressions to the quality of prompted emotional expressions in individuals with ASD compared to typically developing (TD) peers. Understanding the mechanisms and relationship between facial emotion production and facial emotion processing is important for differentiating social communication deficits in ASD, and informing targeted interventions for reciprocal social communication in children with ASD. This quantitative study employed an experimental design. Participants ages 9-17 were recruited through clinics and social media. All participants were right-handed, English speakers, and had an IQ > 80. ASD participants had a current ASD diagnosis, and TD participants had no existing psychiatric or neurodevelopmental disorders. Fourteen youths with ASD, and 14 TD peers were filmed while acting out different emotional expressions (i.e., happy, disgust, etc.). Videos of each produced expression were rated by healthy college students on perceived accuracy and authenticity of portrayed emotions. EE accuracy was measured by the percentage of agreement between the intended expression and the emotion identified by raters in the survey. EE authenticity was measured by the degree to which survey respondents found the portrayed emotion to be genuinely expressed. MRI data were collected on a 3T scanner while participants watched videos of emotional faces presented in a block design. Standard preprocessing was applied. Parameter estimates from previously established functional regions of interest (Casper et al., 2010) known to respond to emotional face observation (i.e., inferior frontal gyrus; IFG) were correlated with average EE ratings. No group differences in the EE accuracy were found (p < .05), however, the TD group was rated to have significantly greater expression authenticity than the ASD group (p = .039). Across all participants, activation of the right IFG during observation of emotional faces was positively correlated with the mean score of EE accuracy (R = .357, p = .042) and authenticity (R = .420, p = .037). When looking within groups, genuineness in the ASD group was positively correlated with neural activation of the right IFG when observing facial expressions, although this relationship did not reach significance (R = .531, p = .062). Data from this research suggests that while individuals with ASD produce intentional expressions that can be accurately identified, the quality of their portrayed emotions is considered less genuine compared TD peers. Moreover, this genuineness is positively related to neural activation in regions involved in social and motor processing. These results indicate that regions involved in observation and production of EE are also related to the perceived genuineness of expressive facial production. These findings offer insights for occupational therapists to deliver more client-centered care for social-emotional processing needs by addressing both production, as well as, recognition of emotional faces. Since the IFG is the hub of the mirror neuron network, this research suggests capitalizing on shared systems for observing and performing actions in therapeutic settings to address social skills necessary for reciprocal social communication.

References

Dapretto, M., Davies, M. S., Pfeifer, J. H., Scott, A. A., Sigman, M., Bookheimer, S. Y., & Iacoboni, M. (2006). Understanding emotions in others: mirror neuron dysfunction in children with autism spectrum disorders. Nature neuroscience, 9(1), 28.

Trevisan, D. A., Hoskyn, M., & Birmingham, E. (2018). Facial expression production in autism: A meta-analysis. Autism Research, 11(12), 1586-1601.

Caspers, S., Zilles, K., Laird, A. R., & Eickhoff, S. B. (2010). ALE meta-analysis of action observation and imitation in the human brain. Neuroimage, 50(3), 1148-1167.