Impaired emotion recognition in Cntnap2-deficient mice is associated with hyper-synchronous prefrontal cortex neuronal activity.

ABSTRACT: Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulty in recognizing emotions in others, a process termed emotion recognition. While human fMRI studies linked multiple brain areas to emotion recognition, the specific mechanisms underlying impaired emotion recognition in ASD are not clear. Here, we employed an emotional state preference (ESP) task to show that Cntnap2-knockout (KO) mice, an established ASD model, do not distinguish between conspecifics according to their emotional state. We assessed brain-wide local-field potential (LFP) signals during various social behavior tasks and found that Cntnap2-KO mice exhibited higher LFP theta and gamma rhythmicity than did C57BL/6J mice, even at rest. Specifically, Cntnap2-KO mice showed increased theta coherence, especially

SUBMITTER: Mohapatra AN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11919685 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature