Dorsal‐movement and ventral‐form regions are functionally connected during visual‐speech recognition

Abstract

Faces convey social information such as emotion and speech. Facial emotion processing is supported via interactions between dorsal-movement and ventral-form visual cortex regions. Here, we explored, for the first time, whether similar dorsalventral interactions (assessed via functional connectivity), might also exist for visualspeech processing. We then examined whether altered dorsal-ventral connectivity is observed in adults with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a disorder associated with impaired visual-speech recognition. We acquired functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data with concurrent eye tracking in pairwise matched control and ASD participants. In both groups, dorsal-movement regions in the visual motion area 5 (V5/MT) and the temporal visual speech area (TVSA) were functionally connected to ventral-form regions (i.e., the occipital face area [OFA] and the fusiform face area [FFA]) during the recognition of visual speech, in contrast to the recognition of face identity. Notably, parts of this functional connectivity were decreased in the ASD group compared to the controls (i.e., right V5/MT-right OFA, left TVSA-left FFA). The results confirmed our hypothesis that functional connectivity between dorsal-movement and ventral-form regions exists during visual-speech processing. Its partial dysfunction in ASD might contribute to difficulties in the recognition of dynamic face information relevant for successful face-to-face communication. K E Y W O R D S atypical perception, dynamic face perception, fMRI, form, functional connectivity, highfunctioning ASD, lip reading, movement

Visual mechanisms for voice‐identity recognition flexibly adjust to auditory noise level

“…For the FFA ROI, the localiser was thresholded with a cluster size of 25 voxels. This cluster size is similar to previous reports for the FFA using this design and contrast (Borowiak et al, 2019;von Kriegstein et al, 2008). We did not observe responses in an analogous region in the left hemisphere at a threshold of <0.01 uncorrected.…”

“…We used a functional localiser (Borowiak, Maguinness, & von Kriegstein, 2019 ; design as von Kriegstein et al, 2008 ) to establish the location of the face‐sensitive FFA and the pSTS‐mFA within participants. The face stimuli consisted of still frames, extracted using Final Cut Pro software (Apple Inc., CA), from video sequences of 50 identities (25 female; 19–34 years).…”

“…We used a standard experiment to localise the FFA and the pSTS‐mFA (Borowiak et al, 2019 ; Pitcher et al, 2011 ; von Kriegstein et al, 2008 ). Participants were presented with still frames taken from videos of faces or objects under four different conditions (Figure 4a ): (a) images of faces from different identities, with different facial speech poses; (b) images of faces from the same identity, with different facial speech poses; (c) images of different objects, from different viewpoints; (d) images of the same object, from different viewpoints.…”

“…We used a standard experiment to localise the FFA and the pSTS-mFA (Borowiak et al, 2019;Pitcher et al, 2011;von Kriegstein et al, 2008). Participants were presented with still frames taken from videos of faces or objects under four different conditions (Figure 4a images were static in nature and presented onscreen for 500 ms with no interstimulus interval (Figure 4b).…”

Visual Perception in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Review of Neuroimaging Studies

“…These results suggested that dynamic face processing in ASD is disrupted from early visual processing (i.e., V1-MTG). One recent study [128] provided evidence that individuals with ASD may have difficulties in face-to-face communication. Participants performed visual speech recognition tasks by matching an articulated syllable with a target syllable while watching a silent video of speakers articulating a syllable.…”