Evidence from pupillometry and fMRI indicates reduced neural response during vicarious social pain but not physical pain in autism.

ABSTRACT: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by substantial social deficits. The notion that dysfunctions in neural circuits involved in sharing another's affect explain these deficits is appealing, but has received only modest experimental support. Here we evaluated a complex paradigm on the vicarious social pain of embarrassment to probe social deficits in ASD as to whether it is more potent than paradigms currently in use. To do so we acquired pupillometry and fMRI in young adults with ASD and matched healthy controls. During a simple vicarious physical pain task no differences emerged between groups in behavior, pupillometry, and neural activation of the anterior insula (AIC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In contrast, processing complex vicarious social pain yielded reduced r

SUBMITTER: Krach S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6869621 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature