Autism, Emotional Processing, and the Amygdala

The Hypothesis of Emotional Empathy Imbalance in Autism: Conscious and Non-conscious Processing of Emotional Faces

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT04549506

Enrollment

Registered

2020-09-16

Start date

2014-04-19

Completion date

2017-06-16

Last updated

2020-09-16

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Autism Spectrum Disorder

Brief summary

Empathy imbalance hypothesis suggests that individuals with autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) should have a deficit of cognitive empathy and a surfeit of emotional empathy. Considering that inconsistent amygdala reactivity to emotional faces might be ascribed to aberrant attention in ASD, the investigators hypothesized to investigate if there would be an imbalance between conscious and nonconscious emotional processing. This fMRI study recruited 26 youths and young adults with autism spectrum disorder and 25 matched controls, and measured their amygdala reactivity and functional connectivity in response to conscious and nonconscious (backward masked) perception of threatening faces. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; amygdala reactivity; emotional processing; fMRI

Interventions

None listed

Study design

Observational model

CASE_CONTROL

Time perspective

CROSS_SECTIONAL

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

13 Years to 40 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* Clinical diagnosis of severity of Autism-Spectrum Disorders * IQ \> 75

Exclusion criteria

* Neurological abnormalities, * A history of epilepsy or seizures, head trauma a * IQ \<75

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Age	1 minutes	Age in years
Anxiety scores	10 minutes	State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)
Severity of Austism-Spectrum Disorders	20 minutes	Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ)
Color identification task	10 minutes	During fMRI scanning, subjects watched emotional faces and performed the color identification task, in which they were asked to judge the color of each face (pseudo-colored in either red, yellow, or blue) and to indicate the answer by a keypad button press.
Detection task	10 minutes	Immediately after fMRI scanning, participants underwent the detection task, during which they were shown all of the stimuli again and alerted of the presence of fearful faces. The subjects were administered a forced-choice test under the same presentation conditions as those during scanning and asked to indicate whether they observed a fearful face or not.
fMRI response	10 minutes	During fMRI scanning, subjects watched emotional faces and performed the color identification task, in which they were asked to judge the color of each face (pseudo-colored in either red, yellow, or blue) and to indicate the answer by a keypad button press.

Outcome results