Combined frequency-tagging EEG and eye-tracking measures provide no support for the "excess mouth/diminished eye attention" hypothesis in autism / Sofie VETTORI in Molecular Autism, 11 (2020)  

Public ISBD [article]  inMolecular Autism > 11 (2020) Titre : Combined frequency-tagging EEG and eye-tracking measures provide no support for the "excess mouth/diminished eye attention" hypothesis in autism Type de document : Texte imprimé et/ou numérique Auteurs : Sofie VETTORI, Auteur ; Stephanie VAN DER DONCK, Auteur ; Jannes NYS, Auteur ; Pieter MOORS, Auteur ; Tim VAN WESEMAEL, Auteur ; Jean STEYAERT, Auteur ; Bruno ROSSION, Auteur ; Milena DZHELYOVA, Auteur ; Bart BOETS, Auteur Langues : Anglais (eng) Index. décimale : PER Périodiques Résumé : BACKGROUND: Scanning faces is important for social interactions. Difficulty with the social use of eye contact constitutes one of the clinical symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It has been suggested that individuals with ASD look less at the eyes and more at the mouth than typically developing (TD) individuals, possibly due to gaze aversion or gaze indifference. However, eye-tracking evidence for this hypothesis is mixed. While gaze patterns convey information about overt orienting processes, it is unclear how this is manifested at the neural level and how relative covert attention to the eyes and mouth of faces might be affected in ASD. METHODS: We used frequency-tagging EEG in combination with eye tracking, while participants watched fast flickering faces for 1-min stimulation sequences. The upper and lower halves of the faces were presented at 6 Hz and 7.5 Hz or vice versa in different stimulation sequences, allowing to objectively disentangle the neural saliency of the eyes versus mouth region of a perceived face. We tested 21 boys with ASD (8-12 years old) and 21 TD control boys, matched for age and IQ. RESULTS: Both groups looked longer at the eyes than the mouth, without any group difference in relative fixation duration to these features. TD boys looked significantly more to the nose, while the ASD boys looked more outside the face. EEG neural saliency data partly followed this pattern: neural responses to the upper or lower face half were not different between groups, but in the TD group, neural responses to the lower face halves were larger than responses to the upper part. Face exploration dynamics showed that TD individuals mostly maintained fixations within the same facial region, whereas individuals with ASD switched more often between the face parts. LIMITATIONS: Replication in large and independent samples may be needed to validate exploratory results. CONCLUSIONS: Combined eye-tracking and frequency-tagged neural responses show no support for the excess mouth/diminished eye gaze hypothesis in ASD. The more exploratory face scanning style observed in ASD might be related to their increased feature-based face processing style. En ligne : http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-020-00396-5 Permalink : https://www.cra-rhone-alpes.org/cid/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=438 [article] Combined frequency-tagging EEG and eye-tracking measures provide no support for the "excess mouth/diminished eye attention" hypothesis in autism [Texte imprimé et/ou numérique] / Sofie VETTORI, Auteur ; Stephanie VAN DER DONCK, Auteur ; Jannes NYS, Auteur ; Pieter MOORS, Auteur ; Tim VAN WESEMAEL, Auteur ; Jean STEYAERT, Auteur ; Bruno ROSSION, Auteur ; Milena DZHELYOVA, Auteur ; Bart BOETS, Auteur. Langues : Anglais (eng) in Molecular Autism > 11 (2020) Index. décimale : PER Périodiques Résumé : BACKGROUND: Scanning faces is important for social interactions. Difficulty with the social use of eye contact constitutes one of the clinical symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It has been suggested that individuals with ASD look less at the eyes and more at the mouth than typically developing (TD) individuals, possibly due to gaze aversion or gaze indifference. However, eye-tracking evidence for this hypothesis is mixed. While gaze patterns convey information about overt orienting processes, it is unclear how this is manifested at the neural level and how relative covert attention to the eyes and mouth of faces might be affected in ASD. METHODS: We used frequency-tagging EEG in combination with eye tracking, while participants watched fast flickering faces for 1-min stimulation sequences. The upper and lower halves of the faces were presented at 6 Hz and 7.5 Hz or vice versa in different stimulation sequences, allowing to objectively disentangle the neural saliency of the eyes versus mouth region of a perceived face. We tested 21 boys with ASD (8-12 years old) and 21 TD control boys, matched for age and IQ. RESULTS: Both groups looked longer at the eyes than the mouth, without any group difference in relative fixation duration to these features. TD boys looked significantly more to the nose, while the ASD boys looked more outside the face. EEG neural saliency data partly followed this pattern: neural responses to the upper or lower face half were not different between groups, but in the TD group, neural responses to the lower face halves were larger than responses to the upper part. Face exploration dynamics showed that TD individuals mostly maintained fixations within the same facial region, whereas individuals with ASD switched more often between the face parts. LIMITATIONS: Replication in large and independent samples may be needed to validate exploratory results. CONCLUSIONS: Combined eye-tracking and frequency-tagged neural responses show no support for the excess mouth/diminished eye gaze hypothesis in ASD. The more exploratory face scanning style observed in ASD might be related to their increased feature-based face processing style. En ligne : http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13229-020-00396-5 Permalink : https://www.cra-rhone-alpes.org/cid/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=438

Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism spectrum disorder / Stephanie VAN DER DONCK in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 61-9 (September 2020)  

Public ISBD [article]  inJournal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry > 61-9 (September 2020) . - p.1019-1029 Titre : Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism spectrum disorder Type de document : Texte imprimé et/ou numérique Auteurs : Stephanie VAN DER DONCK, Auteur ; Milena DZHELYOVA, Auteur ; Sofie VETTORI, Auteur ; Soha Sadat MAHDI, Auteur ; Peter CLAES, Auteur ; Jean STEYAERT, Auteur ; Bart BOETS, Auteur Article en page(s) : p.1019-1029 Langues : Anglais (eng) Mots-clés : Autism  electroencephalography  facial emotion processing  fast periodic visual stimulation  implicit expression detection Index. décimale : PER Périodiques Résumé : BACKGROUND: Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results. METHODS: We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess the neural sensitivity to implicitly detect briefly presented facial expressions among a stream of neutral faces, in 23 boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing (TD) boys. Neutral faces with different identities were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with an expressive face (angry, fearful, happy, sad in separate sequences) every fifth image (i.e., 1.2 Hz oddball frequency). These distinguishable frequency tags for neutral and expressive stimuli allowed direct and objective quantification of the expression-categorization responses, needing only four sequences of 60 s of recording per condition. RESULTS: Both groups show equal neural synchronization to the general face stimulation and similar neural responses to happy and sad faces. However, the ASD group displays significantly reduced responses to angry and fearful faces, compared to TD boys. At the individual subject level, these neural responses allow to predict membership of the ASD group with an accuracy of 87%. Whereas TD participants show a significantly lower sensitivity to sad faces than to the other expressions, ASD participants show an equally low sensitivity to all the expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate an emotion-specific processing deficit, instead of a general emotion-processing problem: Boys with ASD are less sensitive than TD boys to rapidly and implicitly detect angry and fearful faces. The implicit, fast, and straightforward nature of FPVS-EEG opens new perspectives for clinical diagnosis. En ligne : http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13201 Permalink : https://www.cra-rhone-alpes.org/cid/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=430 [article] Rapid neural categorization of angry and fearful faces is specifically impaired in boys with autism spectrum disorder [Texte imprimé et/ou numérique] / Stephanie VAN DER DONCK, Auteur ; Milena DZHELYOVA, Auteur ; Sofie VETTORI, Auteur ; Soha Sadat MAHDI, Auteur ; Peter CLAES, Auteur ; Jean STEYAERT, Auteur ; Bart BOETS, Auteur . - p.1019-1029. Langues : Anglais (eng) in Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry > 61-9 (September 2020) . - p.1019-1029 Mots-clés : Autism  electroencephalography  facial emotion processing  fast periodic visual stimulation  implicit expression detection Index. décimale : PER Périodiques Résumé : BACKGROUND: Difficulties with facial expression processing may be associated with the characteristic social impairments in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Emotional face processing in ASD has been investigated in an abundance of behavioral and EEG studies, yielding, however, mixed and inconsistent results. METHODS: We combined fast periodic visual stimulation (FPVS) with EEG to assess the neural sensitivity to implicitly detect briefly presented facial expressions among a stream of neutral faces, in 23 boys with ASD and 23 matched typically developing (TD) boys. Neutral faces with different identities were presented at 6 Hz, periodically interleaved with an expressive face (angry, fearful, happy, sad in separate sequences) every fifth image (i.e., 1.2 Hz oddball frequency). These distinguishable frequency tags for neutral and expressive stimuli allowed direct and objective quantification of the expression-categorization responses, needing only four sequences of 60 s of recording per condition. RESULTS: Both groups show equal neural synchronization to the general face stimulation and similar neural responses to happy and sad faces. However, the ASD group displays significantly reduced responses to angry and fearful faces, compared to TD boys. At the individual subject level, these neural responses allow to predict membership of the ASD group with an accuracy of 87%. Whereas TD participants show a significantly lower sensitivity to sad faces than to the other expressions, ASD participants show an equally low sensitivity to all the expressions. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate an emotion-specific processing deficit, instead of a general emotion-processing problem: Boys with ASD are less sensitive than TD boys to rapidly and implicitly detect angry and fearful faces. The implicit, fast, and straightforward nature of FPVS-EEG opens new perspectives for clinical diagnosis. En ligne : http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.13201 Permalink : https://www.cra-rhone-alpes.org/cid/opac_css/index.php?lvl=notice_display&id=430

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