Emotional prosody processing in autism spectrum disorder

Gabriela Rosenblau; Dorit Kliemann; Isabel Dziobek; Hauke R Heekeren

doi:10.1093/scan/nsw118

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Emotional prosody processing in autism spectrum disorder

Journal article

Open access

Emotional prosody processing in autism spectrum disorder

Gabriela Rosenblau, Dorit Kliemann, Isabel Dziobek and Hauke R Heekeren

Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, Vol.12(2), pp.224-239

02/01/2017

DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsw118

PMCID: PMC5390729

PMID: 27531389

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Abstract

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are characterized by severe deficits in social communication, whereby the nature of their impairments in emotional prosody processing have yet to be specified. Here, we investigated emotional prosody processing in individuals with ASD and controls with novel, lifelike behavioral and neuroimaging paradigms. Compared to controls, individuals with ASD showed reduced emotional prosody recognition accuracy on a behavioral task. On the neural level, individuals with ASD displayed reduced activity of the STS, insula and amygdala for complex vs basic emotions compared to controls. Moreover, the coupling between the STS and amygdala for complex vs basic emotions was reduced in the ASD group. Finally, groups differed with respect to the relationship between brain activity and behavioral performance. Brain activity during emotional prosody processing was more strongly related to prosody recognition accuracy in ASD participants. In contrast, the coupling between STS and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity predicted behavioral task performance more strongly in the control group. These results provide evidence for aberrant emotional prosody processing of individuals with ASD. They suggest that the differences in the relationship between the neural and behavioral level of individuals with ASD may account for their observed deficits in social communication.

Amygdala - physiopathology

Humans

Middle Aged

Prefrontal Cortex - physiopathology

Male

Reference Values

Recognition (Psychology) - physiology

Cerebral Cortex - physiopathology

Young Adult

Adult

Female

Task Performance and Analysis

Autism Spectrum Disorder - diagnosis

Emotions - physiology

Asperger Syndrome - psychology

Brain - physiopathology

Asperger Syndrome - physiopathology

Autism Spectrum Disorder - psychology

Speech Perception - physiology

Asperger Syndrome - diagnosis

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Temporal Lobe - physiopathology

Functional Neuroimaging

Gyrus Cinguli - physiopathology

Autism Spectrum Disorder - physiopathology

Details

Title: Subtitle: Emotional prosody processing in autism spectrum disorder
Creators: Gabriela Rosenblau - Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 230 S. Frontage Road, New Haven, CT 06519, USA
Dorit Kliemann - Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, 149 Thirteenth Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA
Isabel Dziobek - Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin 10099, Germany
Hauke R Heekeren - Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany
Resource Type: Journal article
Publication Details: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, Vol.12(2), pp.224-239
Publisher: England
DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsw118
PMID: 27531389
PMCID: PMC5390729
ISSN: 1749-5016
eISSN: 1749-5024
Language: English
Date published: 02/01/2017
Academic Unit: Psychiatry; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
Record Identifier: 9984065837102771

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