Science Daily: A Frown Or A Smile? Children With Autism Can't Discern

[merwin]

In a report presented May 5 at the International Meeting for Autism Research in Seatlle, researchers from UCLA explained that children with autism can't do this. They hear and they see, of course, but the areas of the brain that normally respond to such visual cues simply do not respond.

Led by Mari Davies, a UCLA graduate student in psychology, and Susan Bookheimer, a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, the research compared brain activity between 16 typically developing children and 16 high-functioning children with autism. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), both groups were shown a series of faces depicting angry, fearful, happy and neutral expressions. In half the faces, the eyes were averted; with the other half, the faces stared back at the children.

With the typically developing group, the researchers found significant differences in activity in a part of the brain called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), which is known to play a role in evaluating emotions. While these children looked at the direct-gaze faces, the VLPFC became active; with the averted-gaze pictures, it quieted down. In contrast, the autistic children showed no activity in this region of the brain whether they were looking at faces with a direct or an indirect gaze.

"This part of the brain helps us discern the meaning and significance of what another person is thinking," Davies said. "When responding to someone looking straight at you, as compared to someone who's looking away, the brain discerns a difference. When the other person looks away, the brain quiets down."

...

Link to the entire article is here:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070505164645.htm

[hunter]

1. My dogs seem to be able to judge peoples' intent better than I can.

I think they do it by smell, and they probably learn to judge human faces and posture from that basis.

I don't know where you go from this study however, how do "high functioning" autistic kids compare to blind kids, for example?

Do blind kids exhibit a lot of autistic-like behaviors?

Hmmmm....

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. I doubt it.

From living with my son, I suspect it's more than just inability to interpret the visual cues (telling a frown from a smile).

For instance, he has a difficult time interpreting a happy voice vs an unhappy one - except for volume. Also, when I read him a story and ask how the character was feeling, he usually can't say. A blind person wouldn't generally have this problem.

I think it's more like when a NT person sees or hears someone expressing an emotion, they subconsciously refer to a "database" that doesn't exist in a person with asd. Through painstaking study, they can recreate this database, but it isn't standard equipment.

I base this on observation of my son so I might be full of crap. I'd be very interested in your insights on the matter.

[TrogL]

4. I have the same problem with voices

There's a large cafeteria area where I work. It's so noisy that people walking through trying to have a conversation have to raise their voices to be heard. The people here are intelligent and it's a nice place to work so angry, raised voices should be pretty much non-existent. Regardless, whenever I hear them coming I tense up wondering when I'm going to be hit.

[TrogL]

3. FINALLY somebody gets it

It's in hardware.

Early computers had no special circuitry to handle graphics - merely an area of memory reserved for the video display that you had to populate using software. Same with audio, you had to send everything to audio port using software. At best you could make it "bleep" and "bloop" like an early video game. You had to manually read the keyboard and even write code to deal with keyboard bounce.

Eventually computers evolved with separate cards and circuitry for graphics (video card), sound (sound card), keyboard (UART chip) and a host of other functions.

An aspie's brain lacks a "socialization" card or chip - it's broken. Hence an Aspie has to do all this by ordinary thinking, which is exhausting.