Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are strikingly impaired in their social interactions such as not responding to their names or responding inappropriately to the emotional expressions of others. The ability to recognize faces and their emotional expression is important to social skills and continues to develop until adulthood. Studying brain areas involved in emotional processing in ASD is of particular interest as it may help clarify the reasons for the social problems in ASD. Our research in teenagers with ASD has shown that their brain areas that activate during emotion processing are different from teenagers without autism. We will build on these findings by examining the links between these brain areas and the social difficulties in ASD from childhood to adulthood. We expect smaller and perhaps later emotional brain activity patterns in ASD across development, relative to healthy individuals. Children, adolescents and young adults with and without ASD will be asked to participate in this study. Magnetoencephalography (MEG), a brain scanner based on the magnetic activity from the brain, will be used to measure the timing information of brain activity while participants look at faces with different emotions. All participants will also have a structural MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scan to help identify areas of brain activity. This study will provide important timing information on brain activity during emotional face processing in ASD versus individuals without ASD. Findings from this study will help us identify brain areas involved in emotional processing in individuals with and without ASD. Understanding which brain areas and their patterns of activity are different in ASD will be important in terms of developing treatments for learning emotional and social, skills and ultimately, health and quality of life for Canadians with ASD.
Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC)
Autism Research Database (AFD)
