Autism, Emotional Processing, and the Amygdala

Autism Spectrum Disorder Clinical Trial

Official title:

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

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04549506
• Other study ID #: YM102035
• Status: Completed
• Start date: April 19, 2014
• Est. completion date: June 16, 2017

Study information

• Verified date: September 2020
• Source: National Yang Ming University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial 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

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 51
• Est. completion date: June 16, 2017
• Est. primary completion date: September 21, 2016
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 13 Years to 40 Years

Eligibility

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

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Autistic Disorder

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
n/a

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Yawei Cheng

References & Publications (5)

Eimer M, Kiss M, Holmes A. Links between rapid ERP responses to fearful faces and conscious awareness. J Neuropsychol. 2008 Mar;2(Pt 1):165-81. doi: 10.1348/174866407X245411. — View Citation

Hall GB, Doyle KA, Goldberg J, West D, Szatmari P. Amygdala engagement in response to subthreshold presentations of anxious face stimuli in adults with autism spectrum disorders: preliminary insights. PLoS One. 2010 May 25;5(5):e10804. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010804. — View Citation

Liddell BJ, Williams LM, Rathjen J, Shevrin H, Gordon E. A temporal dissociation of subliminal versus supraliminal fear perception: an event-related potential study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2004 Apr;16(3):479-86. — View Citation

Schumann CM, Amaral DG. Stereological analysis of amygdala neuron number in autism. J Neurosci. 2006 Jul 19;26(29):7674-9. — View Citation

Williams LM, Kemp AH, Felmingham K, Liddell BJ, Palmer DM, Bryant RA. Neural biases to covert and overt signals of fear: dissociation by trait anxiety and depression. J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 Oct;19(10):1595-608. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Age	Age in years	1 minutes
Primary	Anxiety scores	State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)	10 minutes
Primary	Severity of Austism-Spectrum Disorders	Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ)	20 minutes
Primary	Color identification task	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.	10 minutes
Primary	Detection task	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.	10 minutes
Primary	fMRI response	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.	10 minutes