Impaired voice processing in reward and salience circuits predicts social communication in children with autism.

ABSTRACT: Engaging with vocal sounds is critical for children's social-emotional learning, and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often 'tune out' voices in their environment. Little is known regarding the neurobiological basis of voice processing and its link to social impairments in ASD. Here, we perform the first comprehensive brain network analysis of voice processing in children with ASD. We examined neural responses elicited by unfamiliar voices and mother's voice, a biologically salient voice for social learning, and identified a striking relationship between social communication abilities in children with ASD and activation in key structures of reward and salience processing regions. Functional connectivity between voice-selective and reward regions during voice processing predicte

SUBMITTER: Abrams DA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6391069 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature