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Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities Research Center
Research Projects (Non-Federal Funding)
Project Title:
Face Processing, Brain Function and Social
Deficits in Autism: An fMRI Study
Principal Investigator:
Kim Dalton, PhD
Autism is a pervasive
developmental disorder associated with moderate to severe deficits
in social and emotional processes. Inattention to faces is a
developmentally primary symptom of autism that is associated with
delays in early, face-related social milestones, such as looking to
another person’s face to reference that person’s reactions or to
share their own experiences. Gaze aversion, social withdrawal and
deficits in emotion and face processing continue through out the
life span as hallmark characteristics of autism. Recent research has
found that gaze-aversion in individuals with autism is associated
with an atypical brain activation pattern when individuals with
autism process faces. It is hypothesized that gaze-aversion and
abnormalities in the perception of faces and their communicative
signals contribute significantly to the profound social impairment
that characterizes autism and have their roots in deficits in
affective neural circuitry. Specifically, gaze-aversion and
differences in face processing are proposed to arise from
abnormalities in the central circuitry of emotion and emotion
regulation leading to heightened sensitivity and over arousal to
social/emotional stimuli in autism. This study is designed to
elaborate on a model of the neural circuitry of emotion and it’s
relation to social/emotional dysfunction in autism. Brain functional
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) will be used along with
eye-tracking and other physiological and behavioral measures to test
the hypothesis that gaze-aversion and differences in face processes
in autism have their foundation in unique affective neural circuitry
responses and may serve to abate over arousal by reducing the social
significance of faces. |
