AI Article Synopsis

  • The study aimed to compare neural activity patterns between autistic individuals and healthy controls when processing faces and complex patterns.
  • Autistic participants showed lower BOLD signals in the fusiform gyrus, crucial for face recognition, and higher signals in the medial occipital gyrus related to object processing.
  • The results suggest that autistic individuals have a different approach to visual information, favoring detailed local processing over the broader global understanding typical in non-autistic individuals.

Article Abstract

Objective: To investigate whether autistic subjects show a different pattern of neural activity than healthy individuals during processing of faces and complex patterns.

Methods: Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes accompanying visual processing of faces and complex patterns were analyzed in an autistic group (n = 7; 25.3 [6.9] years) and a control group (n = 7; 27.7 [7.8] years).

Results: Compared with unaffected subjects, autistic subjects demonstrated lower BOLD signals in the fusiform gyrus, most prominently during face processing, and higher signals in the more object-related medial occipital gyrus. Further signal increases in autistic subjects vs controls were found in regions highly important for visual search: the superior parietal lobule and the medial frontal gyrus, where the frontal eye fields are located.

Conclusions: The cortical activation pattern during face processing indicates deficits in the face-specific regions, with higher activations in regions involved in visual search. These findings reflect different strategies for visual processing, supporting models that propose a predisposition to local rather than global modes of information processing in autism.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1212/01.wnl.0000091862.22033.1aDOI Listing

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