Altered Connectivity in Autistic Adults during Complex Facial Emotion Recognition: A Study of EEG Imaginary Coherence

Abstract

Difficulties in Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) are commonly associated with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the mechanisms underlying these impairments remain inconclusive. While atypical cortical connectivity has been observed in autistic individuals, there is a paucity of investigation during cognitive tasks such as FER. It is possible that atypical cortical connectivity may underlie FER impairments in this population. Electroencephalography (EEG) Imaginary Coherence was examined in 22 autistic adults and 23 typically developing (TD) matched controls during a complex, dynamic FER task. Autistic adults demonstrated reduced coherence between both short and long range inter-hemispheric electrodes. By contrast, short range intra-hemispheric connectivity was increased in frontal and occipital regions during FER. These findings suggest altered network functioning in ASD

Altered task induced functional brain networks and small-world properties in autism

“…Similarly, a preference for high-pass frequency features has been found in FER studies previously (52), with this preference consistent with altered cognitive style hypotheses (44). Decreased connectivity in the lower EEG frequency bands was also reported earlier on a similar sample using imaginary part of coherency (19), and a recent review found that lower connectivity seemed to be dominant in the lower frequencies while higher and lower connectivity appeared to be dominant in the higher frequency bands (11). An absence of the modulation of theta-band coherence during an emotion recognition task in autistic children compared to non-autistic children was found (53), with the severity of social impairment found to be related to the absence of cortical connectivity modulation of the band.…”

“…The experimental design is the same as reported elsewhere ( 19 , 22 ). Video stimuli from the Cambridge Mind Reading Face-Voice Battery ( 25 ) of actors expressing complex emotions were used in this study to evaluate FER.…”

“…This resulted in a total sample of 24 non-autistic and 25 autistic adults. Eye-tracking and EEG data from sub-samples of this larger sample have been reported elsewhere (19,22). An additional five non-autistic and six autistic adults were excluded from the current study due to insufficient EEG quality for the analytic methods employed.…”

“…Research that has examined functional connectivity during FER in autism has found altered connectivity in theta, alpha and beta bands, proposed to be reflective of difficulties in automatic emotion processing and greater voluntary control of emotion processing (17,18). In addition, some preliminary work has provided supporting evidence to suggest that autistic adults show increased short-range connectivity, alongside reduced long range connectivity during FER (19).…”

Detecção precoce do transtorno do espectro autista utilizando EEG

“…Os resultados mostraram que a máxima taxa de reconhecimento alcançada foi de 91,9%. A resposta às emoções faciais também foram usadas por Black et al (2018) para calcular a parte imaginária da coerência. Os resultados indicaram que adultos com TEA demonstraram coerência reduzida inter-hemisférios de curto e longo alcance.…”