Clinical trial NCT04549506: Autism, Emotional Processing, and the Amygdala
Official title: The Hypothesis of Emotional Empathy Imbalance in Autism: Conscious and Non-conscious Processing of Emotional Faces
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder
Lead sponsor: National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University
Sponsor class: OTHER
First posted: 2020-09-16
Enrollment: 51
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 13
Maximum age (years): 40
Standard ages: CHILD
ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: CASE_CONTROL
Time perspective: CROSS_SECTIONAL
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Autism group: 26 individuals with ASD meeting DSM-V criteria Control group: 25 gender, and age matched healthy controls

Brief summary: Empathy imbalance hypothesis suggests that individuals with autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) should have a deficit of cognitive empathy and a surfeit of emotional empathy. Considering that inconsistent amygdala reactivity to emotional faces might be ascribed to aberrant attention in ASD, the investigators hypothesized to investigate if there would be an imbalance between conscious and nonconscious emotional processing. This fMRI study recruited 26 youths and young adults with autism spectrum disorder and 25 matched controls, and measured their amygdala reactivity and functional connectivity in response to conscious and nonconscious (backward masked) perception of threatening faces.

Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; amygdala reactivity; emotional processing; fMRI


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Clinical diagnosis of severity of Autism-Spectrum Disorders
* IQ \> 75

Exclusion Criteria:

* Neurological abnormalities,
* A history of epilepsy or seizures, head trauma a
* IQ \<75

Primary outcomes:
measure: Age
timeFrame: 1 minutes
measure: Anxiety scores
timeFrame: 10 minutes
measure: Severity of Austism-Spectrum Disorders
timeFrame: 20 minutes
measure: Color identification task
timeFrame: 10 minutes
measure: Detection task
timeFrame: 10 minutes
measure: fMRI response
timeFrame: 10 minutes
Secondary outcomes:
Other outcomes:
Locations:
Study officials:
References:
citation: Liddell BJ, Williams LM, Rathjen J, Shevrin H, Gordon E. A temporal dissociation of subliminal versus supraliminal fear perception: an event-related potential study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2004 Apr;16(3):479-86. doi: 10.1162/089892904322926809.
citation: Williams LM, Kemp AH, Felmingham K, Liddell BJ, Palmer DM, Bryant RA. Neural biases to covert and overt signals of fear: dissociation by trait anxiety and depression. J Cogn Neurosci. 2007 Oct;19(10):1595-608. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2007.19.10.1595.
citation: Schumann CM, Amaral DG. Stereological analysis of amygdala neuron number in autism. J Neurosci. 2006 Jul 19;26(29):7674-9. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1285-06.2006.
citation: Eimer M, Kiss M, Holmes A. Links between rapid ERP responses to fearful faces and conscious awareness. J Neuropsychol. 2008 Mar;2(Pt 1):165-81. doi: 10.1348/174866407X245411.
citation: Hall GB, Doyle KA, Goldberg J, West D, Szatmari P. Amygdala engagement in response to subthreshold presentations of anxious face stimuli in adults with autism spectrum disorders: preliminary insights. PLoS One. 2010 May 25;5(5):e10804. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0010804.