Transdiagnostic deviant facial recognition for implicit negative emotion in autism and schizophrenia

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychiatry
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Impaired facial affect recognition (FAR) is a hallmark of schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• Previous research suggests dysfunction in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus, but findings differ regarding implicit versus explicit FAR processing and between patient groups.
• A direct comparison of FAR alterations and underlying neural mechanisms in schizophrenia and ASD within an identical experimental design is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine if FAR alterations are equally prevalent in schizophrenia and ASD.
• To investigate whether these alterations manifest in implicit or explicit FAR tasks.
• To identify shared or disorder-specific neural mechanisms underlying FAR deficits in these conditions.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to assess neural activation during explicit and implicit negative and neutral FAR.
• The study included three groups: young adults with ASD (n=33), individuals with paranoid-schizophrenia (n=20), and age- and gender-matched controls (n=25).
• Group differences in activation patterns were analyzed by comparing each clinical group to the control group.

Main Results:

• Both schizophrenia and ASD groups exhibited altered activation exclusively during implicit FAR in the amygdala and fusiform gyrus compared to controls.
• The ASD group additionally showed reduced activation in medial prefrontal cortex (PFC), dorsolateral PFC, ventrolateral PFC, posterior superior temporal sulcus, and left temporoparietal junction.
• Despite more widespread neural differences in ASD, direct comparison between patient groups revealed no disorder-specific deficits in FAR.

Conclusions:

• Findings suggest a common neural deficit in implicit negative facial affect recognition in both schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.
• The results highlight the amygdala and fusiform gyrus as key areas involved in this shared deficit.
• While ASD presents with broader neural alterations, the core impairment in implicit negative FAR appears common to both disorders.