1Nanjing Brain Hospital Affiliated to Nanjing Medical University, Child Mental Health Research Center, Nanjing 210029, China.
1Key Laboratory of Child Development and Learning Science of the Ministry of Education, Research Center for Learning Science, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

Abstract 

The symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been hypothesized to be caused by changes in brain connectivity. From the clinical perspective, the "disconnectivity" hypothesis has been used to explain characteristic impairments in "socio-emotional" function. Therefore, in this study we compared the facial emotional recognition (FER) feature and the integrity of social-emotional-related white-matter tracts between children and adolescents with high-functioning ASD (HFA) and their typically developing (TD) counterparts. The correlation between the two factors was explored to find out if impairment of the white-matter tracts is the neural basis of social-emotional disorders. Compared with the TD group, FER was significantly impaired and the fractional anisotropy value of the right cingulate fasciculus was increased in the HFA group (P < 0.01). In conclusion, the FER function of children and adolescents with HFA was impaired and the microstructure of the cingulate fasciculus had abnormalities.

Keywords

Autism spectrum disorder; Diffusion tensor imaging; Facial emotional recognition; Social-emotional related white matter fiber tracts; Tractography

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