Differences in cortical processing of facial emotions in broader autism phenotype

Abstract

Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) defines heritable features present in unaffected relatives of individuals with autism. BAP affects face perception, an impairment associated with the magnocellular (M) visual pathway that processes information of low spatial frequency and the parvocellular (P) visual pathway that processes information of high spatial frequency. Here we tested the hypothesis that parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pASD), who are BAP candidates, present altered M and P pathways integration for the processing of facial emotions information as compared to parents of typically developing children (pTD). For this end, we carried out electroencephalographic recordings in pTD and pASD, while they had to recognize emotions of face pictures composed by the same or different emotions (happiness or anger) presented in different spatial frequencies. We found no significant differences in the accuracy between groups but lower amplitude in a late frontoparietal potential activity, when happiness emotion was displayed in both spatial frequencies in pASD. Source analysis showed a difference in the right posterior part of the superior temporal region. These results reveal an alteration in brain processing of facial emotion in BAP that could be a neuronal marker of ASD.