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Faces in the autistic brain: neural processing of facial identity and facial expression in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder

Boek - Dissertatie

Faces are extraordinarily rich social stimuli of paramount importance to humans in social interactions. Therefore, face processing is an indispensable and extensively used human skill. Most people are true experts in face processing: they can differentiate remarkably well between countless identities and expressions. However, this skill has been suggested to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goal of this doctoral project was to compare the processing of faces between individuals with ASD and neurotypicals (NTs). In particular, we investigated facial identity and facial expression processing in adults men with ASD and age- and IQ-matched neurotypicals, using both functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography. We found no differences between individuals with and without ASD in terms of behavioural face processing performance, neural activity levels while processing faces, neural representations of facial identities and expressions, release from adaptation to facial identities and expressions, or sensitivity to changes in facial identities and expressions. We only observed a minor difference between the groups in how amygdala is connected to two low-level regions in the face processing network: inferior occipital cortex and V1. We can conclude that adults with and without ASD process facial identities and expression very similarly.
Jaar van publicatie:2021
Toegankelijkheid:Open