Reduced gaze-cueing effect with neutral and emotional faces in adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

This study examined whether gaze shift of neutral and emotional faces triggers reflexive attention orienting in 45 adults with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 45 age-, sex-, and intelligence quotient-matched typically developing (TD) adults. The cues changed from neutral to anger, fearful, or happy expressions under the emotional face condition. Participants were asked to detect a target that appeared to the left or right of the cue stimuli, as rapidly and accurately as possible. The results revealed a gaze-cueing effect, where the reaction time to the target was shorter under the "gaze-at-target" condition than under the "non-gaze-at-target" condition in both groups. Facial expressions did not modulate the gaze-cueing effect in either group. However, the magnitude of the gaze-cueing effect was smaller in the ADHD group than in the TD group. Contrary to our expectations, a larger gaze-cueing effect was observed in individuals with ADHD who exhibited more severe inattention. Our results suggest that adults with ADHD ineffectively orient their attention toward another's gaze. Moreover, difficulty with sustained and selective attention may be associated with a larger influence of gaze direction; this difficulty may play a role in social interaction problems.

Self-referential and social saliency information influences memory following attention orienting.

Self-referential information is a processing priority in individuals. Whether or how self-referential information plays a role in attention orienting by modulating memory encoding during attention orienting is presently unknown. First, we investigated this role with self-referential processing for words. Participants were trained to associate two cues (red and green arrows) with social labels (the words "self" and "other" in Experiment 1). Then, participants performed a cueing task to determine whether various targets were presented at a right or left location. Finally, a recognition task of target items was implemented to examine the influence of arrow cues on memory. Second, given that the difference in social salience also exists between self-and other-referential processing, we investigate whether the same effect as the self-referential processing of words exists for emotional faces with high social salience and regardless of emotional valence (a high and a low social salience in Experiment 2A; and a positive and a negative emotional face in Experiment 2B). The results showed that self-referential and emotional cues, irrespective of their emotional valence, enhance memory for the indicated target objects across experiments. This suggests that automatic prioritization of social salience for self-referential words or emotional faces plays an important role in subsequent cognitive processing through attention orienting to influence memory.

No Influence of Emotional Faces or Autistic Traits on Gaze-Cueing in General Population.

The present study addressed the controversial issue of whether autistic traits in the general population are associated with the automatic and fundamental aspects of joint attention through eye gaze. Specifically, we examined whether the degree of autistic traits is associated with the magnitude of reflexive attention orienting in the direction of another's eye gaze embedded in neutral and emotional (angry, fearful, and happy) faces. The cue stimuli changed gaze direction and facial expressions simultaneously. Participants were asked to detect a target that appeared at the left or right of the cue stimuli. The results revealed a robust gaze-cueing effect, such that the reaction time to the target was shorter under the gazed-at-target condition than under the non-gazed-at-target condition. However, emotional expressions did not modulate the gaze-cueing effect. Furthermore, individual differences in autistic traits and emotional characteristics (social anxiety, alexithymia, and emotional disturbances) did not influence the magnitude of the gaze-cueing effect. Although the ability to orient attention in the direction of another's gaze is a fundamental function of social development, the gaze-cueing effect measured in a controlled experiment might not be an elaborate representation of the current social cognitive function, at least in typically developing adults.

Beauty in everyday motion: Electrophysiological correlates of aesthetic preference for human walking.

Aesthetic preference occurs in everyday experience. Studies have suggested that aesthetic preference (such as observing other's motion) affects social interaction via enhanced neural processing. This study investigated the effect of aesthetic preference on neural activities, in response to walking motion. Twenty participants observed biological motion (BM) representing three walking types (model-posture, good-posture, and bad-posture) and their scrambled motion (SM) during the event-related potentials measurement. The N200 and N300 amplitudes, reflecting the early sensory and the later integrational processes, were analyzed. The results revealed that the N200 amplitude of BM was greater than that of SM in the good- and bad-posture conditions. The N300 amplitude was larger in BM than SM regardless of the walking type. Exploratory regression analyses indicated that the N300 for BM, but not for SM or N200, was more negatively deflected with the increase of aesthetic preference scores. Our findings suggest that aesthetic preference enhances the later integrational process of BM represented in the N300 amplitude, whereas the early perceptual process (reflected by the N200 amplitude) is potentially modulated by familiarity rather than aesthetic preference in other's motion.

The structural neural correlates of atypical facial expression recognition in autism spectrum disorder.

Previous studies have demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are worse at recognizing facial expressions than are typically developing (TD) individuals. The present study investigated the differences in structural neural correlates of emotion recognition between individuals with and without ASD using voxel-based morphometry (VBM). We acquired structural MRI data from 27 high-functioning adults with ASD and 27 age- and sex-matched TD individuals. The ability to recognize facial expressions was measured using a label-matching paradigm featuring six basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise). The behavioural task did not find deficits of emotion recognition in ASD after controlling for intellectual ability. However, the VBM analysis for the region of interest showed a positive correlation between the averaged percent accuracy across six basic emotions and the grey matter volume of the right inferior frontal gyrus in TD individuals, but not in individuals with ASD. The VBM for the whole brain region under each emotion condition revealed a positive correlation between the percent accuracy for disgusted faces and the grey matter volume of the left dorsomedial prefrontal cortex in individuals with ASD, but not in TD individuals. The different pattern of correlations suggests that individuals with and without ASD use different processing mechanisms for recognizing others' facial expressions.

Schizotypy is associated with difficulties detecting emotional facial expressions.

People with schizophrenia or subclinical schizotypal traits exhibit impaired recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether the detection of emotional facial expressions is impaired in people with schizophrenia or high levels of schizotypy. The present study examined whether the detection of emotional facial expressions would be associated with schizotypy in a non-clinical population after controlling for the effects of IQ, age, and sex. Participants were asked to respond to whether all faces were the same as quickly and as accurately as possible following the presentation of angry or happy faces or their anti-expressions among crowds of neutral faces. Anti-expressions contain a degree of visual change that is equivalent to that of normal emotional facial expressions relative to neutral facial expressions and are recognized as neutral expressions. Normal expressions of anger and happiness were detected more rapidly and accurately than their anti-expressions. Additionally, the degree of overall schizotypy was negatively correlated with the effectiveness of detecting normal expressions versus anti-expressions. An emotion-recognition task revealed that the degree of positive schizotypy was negatively correlated with the accuracy of facial expression recognition. These results suggest that people with high levels of schizotypy experienced difficulties detecting and recognizing emotional facial expressions.

Eye contact perception in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder.

LAY ABSTRACT: The detection of a self-directed gaze is often the starting point for social interactions and a person who feels as if they are being watched can prepare to respond to others' actions irrespective of the real gaze direction because the other person may likely be motivated to approach. Although many studies demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorder have difficulty discriminating gaze direction, it remains unclear how the perception of self-directed gaze by individuals with autism spectrum disorder differs from that of age-, sex-, and IQ-matched typically developing individuals. Participants observed faces with various gaze directions and answered whether the person in the photograph was looking at them or not. Individuals with and without autism spectrum disorder were just as likely to perceive subtle averted gazes as self-directed gazes. The frequency of perceiving a self-directed gaze decreased as gaze aversion increased in both groups and, in general, individuals with autism spectrum disorder showed a comparable ability to perceive a self-directed gaze as that of typically developing individuals. Interestingly, considering face membership of photographs (ingroup or outgroup faces), typically developing individuals, but not individuals with autism spectrum disorder, were more likely to perceive self-directed gazes from ingroup faces than from outgroup faces. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorder had different affective experiences in response to ingroup and outgroup faces. These results suggest that individuals with autism spectrum disorder did not show an ingroup bias for the perception of a self-directed gaze, and raise a possibility that an atypical emotional experience contributes to the diminished ingroup bias.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms Underlying Social Atypicalities in Autism: Weak Amygdala's Emotional Modulation Hypothesis.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental condition associated with atypicalities in social interaction. Although psychological and neuroimaging studies have revealed divergent impairments in psychological processes (e.g., emotion and perception) and neural activity (e.g., amygdala, superior temporal sulcus, and inferior frontal gyrus) related to the processing of social stimuli, it remains difficult to integrate these findings. In an effort to resolve this issue, we review our psychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) findings and present a hypothetical neurocognitive model. Our psychological study showed that emotional modulation of reflexive joint attention is impaired in individuals with ASD. Our fMRI study showed that modulation from the amygdala to the neocortex during observation of dynamic facial expressions is reduced in the ASD group. Based on these findings and other evidence, we hypothesize that weak modulation from the amygdala to the neocortex-through which emotion rapidly modulates various types of perceptual, cognitive, and motor processing functions-underlies the social atypicalities in individuals with ASD.

Atypical Multisensory Integration and the Temporal Binding Window in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The present study examined the relationship between multisensory integration and the temporal binding window (TBW) for multisensory processing in adults with Autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The ASD group was less likely than the typically developing group to perceive an illusory flash induced by multisensory integration during a sound-induced flash illusion (SIFI) task. Although both groups showed comparable TBWs during the multisensory temporal order judgment task, correlation analyses and Bayes factors provided moderate evidence that the reduced SIFI susceptibility was associated with the narrow TBW in the ASD group. These results suggest that the individuals with ASD exhibited atypical multisensory integration and that individual differences in the efficacy of this process might be affected by the temporal processing of multisensory information.

Amygdala activity related to perceived social support.

Perceived social support enhances well-being and prevents stress-related ill-being. A recent structural neuroimaging study reported that the amygdala volume is positively associated with perceived social support. However, it remains unknown how neural activity in this region and functional connectivity (FC) between this and other regions are related to perceived social support. To investigate these issues, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging was performed to analyze the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF). Perceived social support was evaluated using the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Lower fALFF values in the bilateral amygdalae were associated with higher MSPSS scores. Additionally, stronger FC between the left amygdala and right orbitofrontal cortex and between the left amygdala and bilateral precuneus were associated with higher MSPSS scores. The present findings suggest that reduced amygdala activity and heightened connectivity between the amygdala and other regions underlie perceived social support and its positive functions.

Everything has Its Time: Narrow Temporal Windows are Associated with High Levels of Autistic Traits Via Weaknesses in Multisensory Integration.

The present study examined whether fundamental sensory functions such as temporal processing and multisensory integration are related to autistic traits in the general population. Both a narrower temporal window (TW) for simultaneous perception, as measured by a temporal order judgement task, and a reduced ability to engage in multisensory integration during the sound-induced flash illusion task were related to higher levels of autistic traits. Additionally, a narrow TW is associated with high levels of autistic traits due to a deficiency in multisensory integration. Taken together, these findings suggest that alterations in fundamental functions produce a cascading effect on higher-order social and cognitive functions, such as those experienced by people with autism spectrum disorder.

Atypical Amygdala-Neocortex Interaction During Dynamic Facial Expression Processing in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Atypical reciprocal social interactions involving emotional facial expressions are a core clinical feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have demonstrated that some social brain regions, including subcortical (e.g., amygdala) and neocortical regions (e.g., fusiform gyrus, FG) are less activated during the processing of facial expression stimuli in individuals with ASD. However, the functional networking patterns between the subcortical and cortical regions in processing emotional facial expressions remain unclear. We investigated this issue in ASD (n = 31) and typically developing (TD; n = 31) individuals using fMRI. Participants viewed dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness and their corresponding mosaic images. Regional brain activity analysis revealed reduced activation of several social brain regions, including the amygdala, in the ASD group compared with the TD group in response to dynamic facial expressions vs. dynamic mosaics (p < 0.05, η p 2 = 0.19). Dynamic causal modeling (DCM) analyses were then used to compare models with forward, backward, and bi-directional effective connectivity between the amygdala and neocortical networks. The results revealed that: (1) the model with effective connectivity from the amygdala to the neocortex best fit the data of both groups; and (2) the same model best accounted for group differences. Coupling parameter (i.e., effective connectivity) analyses showed that the modulatory effects of dynamic facial processing were substantially weaker in the ASD group than in the TD group. These findings suggest that atypical modulation from the amygdala to the neocortex underlies impairment in social interaction involving dynamic facial expressions in individuals with ASD.

Resting-state neural activity and connectivity associated with subjective happiness.

The majority of people throughout the world rate subjective happiness as the top of the important thing in life. A recent structural neuroimaging study exploring neurocognitive mechanisms underlying subjective happiness has suggested that the gray matter volume of the right precuneus is associated with Subjective Happiness Scale (SHS) scores. However, how the neural activity in this region, as well as the neural functional coupling between this and other regions, could be related to SHS scores remains unclear. To investigate these issues, we performed resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and analyzed the fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation (fALFF) in participants, whose subjective happiness was evaluated using the SHS. Lower fALFF values in the right precuneus were associated with higher SHS scores. Furthermore, functional connectivity and spectral dynamic causal modeling analyses showed that both functional and effective connectivity of the right precuneus with the right amygdala were positively associated with SHS scores. These findings, together with other evidence on the information-processing functions of these brain regions, suggest the possibility that subjective happiness is associated with a reduction in self-referential mental processes, which are well integrated with emotional processing.

The atypical social brain network in autism: advances in structural and functional MRI studies.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: To review advances in structural and functional MRI studies regarding the neural underpinnings of social atypicalities in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). RECENT FINDINGS: According to the hypothesis that the social brain network, which includes brain regions, such as the amygdala and superior temporal sulcus, may be atypical in ASD, recent structural MRI studies have identified regional gray matter volume abnormalities in the social brain regions in ASD groups compared with the typically developing groups. Studies evaluating gray matter volume covariance and white matter volume/integrity suggested network-level abnormalities associated with the social brain regions. Recent functional MRI studies assessing resting-state neural activity showed reduced functional connectivity among the social brain regions in individuals with ASD compared with typically developing groups. Similarly, task-based functional MRI studies recently revealed a reduction in regional activity and intraregional functional coupling in the social brain regions during the processing of social stimuli in individuals with ASD. SUMMARY: These structural and functional MRI studies provide supportive evidence for the hypothesis that an atypical social brain network underlies behavioral social problems in ASD.

Widespread and lateralized social brain activity for processing dynamic facial expressions.

Dynamic facial expressions of emotions constitute natural and powerful means of social communication in daily life. A number of previous neuroimaging studies have explored the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of dynamic facial expressions, and indicated the activation of certain social brain regions (e.g., the amygdala) during such tasks. However, the activated brain regions were inconsistent across studies, and their laterality was rarely evaluated. To investigate these issues, we measured brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging in a relatively large sample (n = 51) during the observation of dynamic facial expressions of anger and happiness and their corresponding dynamic mosaic images. The observation of dynamic facial expressions, compared with dynamic mosaics, elicited stronger activity in the bilateral posterior cortices, including the inferior occipital gyri, fusiform gyri, and superior temporal sulci. The dynamic facial expressions also activated bilateral limbic regions, including the amygdalae and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, more strongly versus mosaics. In the same manner, activation was found in the right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and left cerebellum. Laterality analyses comparing original and flipped images revealed right hemispheric dominance in the superior temporal sulcus and IFG and left hemispheric dominance in the cerebellum. These results indicated that the neural mechanisms underlying processing of dynamic facial expressions include widespread social brain regions associated with perceptual, emotional, and motor functions, and include a clearly lateralized (right cortical and left cerebellar) network like that involved in language processing.

Corticostriatal-limbic correlates of sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive traits.

Obsessive-compulsive (OC) traits such as intrusive worrisome ideas or excessive concerns for threats are frequent in general population (5%-13%). However, the structural neural correlates of the sub-clinical OC traits remain largely unknown. Based on the data of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), we hypothesized that the subcortical and cortical structures, constituting the cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuit (CSTC) and the limbic system, could be associated with OC traits. Here we conducted voxel-based morphometry (VBM) in order to investigate fine grained volume changes of these structures in 49 non-clinical subjects. Analysis of structural covariances of these structures was also conducted. We identified volume changes associated with OC traits in the left putamen and the left amygdala. The results of structural covariance analysis revealed increased covariances in relation to the heightened OC traits between the left putamen to bilateral medial prefrontal cortex and to the left cerebellum, and between the left globus pallidus to the bilateral anterior cingulate cortices. The present finding of volume changes of the corticostriatal-limbic structures may reflect neuroplasticity associated with OC traits. Since the abnormality of these structures were also observed in the clinical OCD, the subclinical subjects with OC traits shared "neuronal obsessive traits" that might precondition OCD at the network level.

Analyzing Neural Activity and Connectivity Using Intracranial EEG Data with SPM Software.

Measuring neural activity and connectivity associated with cognitive functions at high spatial and temporal resolutions is an important goal in cognitive neuroscience. Intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) can directly record electrical neural activity and has the unique potential to accomplish this goal. Traditionally, averaging analysis has been applied to analyze intracranial EEG data; however, several new techniques are available for depicting neural activity and intra- and inter-regional connectivity. Here, we introduce two analytical protocols we recently applied to analyze intracranial EEG data using the Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM) software: time-frequency SPM analysis for neural activity and dynamic causal modeling of induced responses for intra- and inter-regional connectivity. We report our analysis of intracranial EEG data during the observation of faces as representative results. The results revealed that the inferior occipital gyrus (IOG) showed gamma-band activity at very early stages (110 ms) in response to faces, and both the IOG and amygdala showed rapid intra- and inter-regional connectivity using various types of oscillations. These analytical protocols have the potential to identify the neural mechanisms underlying cognitive functions with high spatial and temporal profiles.

A functional but atypical self: Influence of self-relevant processing on the gaze cueing effect in autism spectrum disorder.

The present study aimed to determine whether the impairments in joint attention observed in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in clinical studies were influenced by self-relevant processing. To investigate this possibility, participants were trained to associate two cues (a female face and male face) with distinct words ("self" and "other"). The ASD and typically developing (TD) groups both demonstrated a significant self-relevant effect, responding more quickly to self-pairs than to other pairs. Then, two types of sound (voice and tone) used as targets were manipulated to determine whether the influence of self-relevance on the cueing effect would be similar between individuals with ASD and TD individuals. Individuals with ASD exhibited reduced cueing effect to voice vs. tone targets, whereas TD individuals showed an enhanced cueing effect to voice vs. tone targets when using self-relevant, but not other-relevant, gaze cues. The present results suggest that individuals with ASD exhibit intact self-relevant processing but that the self-relevant processing affects the attentional system of individuals with ASD in a manner different from that of TD individuals and that this difference depends on the self-relevance of the specific target stimuli. Autism Research 2018, 11: 1522-1531. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Observing another person's eye gaze induces attentional shift in the onlooker. Clinical studies have reported that social interaction, including gaze-triggered attention, is impaired in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), while psychological studies have generally reported intact gaze-triggered attention in ASD. This study provided new evidence indicating that gaze-triggered attention is influenced by self-relevant processing in a different manner in ASD individuals than it is in TD individuals. The magnitude of attentional shift triggered by the self-relevant gaze cue was associated with symptom severity in ASD. The functional but atypical self-relevant processing might be able to explain discrepancies in social attention between experimental and real situations.

The Influence of Self-Referential Processing on Attentional Orienting in Frontoparietal Networks.

Self-referential processing refers to the processing of information relevant to oneself and plays an important role in cognition. Behavioral studies have shown that directional cue stimuli have a qualitatively different function during attentional orienting after presentation of the cue associated with the self. However, it is necessary to determine how neural activity is influenced by self-referential processing during attentional orienting. The present study involved establishing an association between non-predictive arrow cues and the "self" during a training task and then investigating the influence of self-referential processing on neural activity during attentional orienting. Enhanced neural activity was observed in cortical midline structures (CMS) during the use of self- vs. neutral-arrow cues, which suggests that the arrow associated with the "self" triggered self-referential processing during attentional orienting due to the experiences of the participant in the training task. Comparison of obtained under the incongruent and congruent conditions revealed a qualitative difference in neural activities between the self- and neutral-arrow cues associated with attentional orienting. Furthermore, when the neutral-arrow cue was treated as a baseline condition, neural activity was reduced in the frontoparietal attention networks by self-referential processing under the incongruent condition, but it was enhanced under the congruent condition. Thus, the stimulus modulated subsequent attentional neural processes after being associated with the self as a cue, which indicates that this process may be triggered by self-reference to automatically and effectively capture information. Our findings extend those of previous behavioral studies of neural activity, suggesting that directional cues were qualitatively influenced by self-referential processing, and showed different functions during attentional orienting. Moreover, the present study provides important evidence of how self-referential processing affects attentional orienting in the frontoparietal network. Highlights -Enhanced activity was observed in CMS due to self-referential processing.-The influence of self-referential processing differed in the frontoparietal network.-Activity was enhanced by self-referential processing under the congruent condition.-Activity was reduced by self-referential processing under the incongruent condition.

Spatiotemporal commonalities of fronto-parietal activation in attentional orienting triggered by supraliminal and subliminal gaze cues: An event-related potential study.

Eye gaze triggers attentional shifts with and without conscious awareness. It remains unclear whether the spatiotemporal patterns of electric neural activity are the same for conscious and unconscious attentional shifts. Thus, the present study recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) and evaluated the neural activation involved in attentional orienting induced by subliminal and supraliminal gaze cues. Nonpredictive gaze cues were presented in the central field of vision, and participants were asked to detect a subsequent peripheral target. The mean reaction time was shorter for congruent gaze cues than for incongruent gaze cues under both presentation conditions, indicating that both types of cues reliably trigger attentional orienting. The ERP analysis revealed that averted versus straight gaze induced greater negative deflection in the bilateral fronto-central and temporal regions between 278 and 344 ms under both supraliminal and subliminal presentation conditions. Supraliminal cues, irrespective of gaze direction, induced a greater negative amplitude than did subliminal cues at the right posterior cortices at a peak of approximately 170 ms and in the 200-300 ms. These results suggest that similar spatial and temporal fronto-parietal activity is involved in attentional orienting triggered by both supraliminal and subliminal gaze cues, although inputs from different visual processing routes (cortical and subcortical regions) may trigger activity in the attentional network.