Journal
SOCIAL COGNITIVE AND AFFECTIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 10, Issue 8, Pages 1074-1083Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsu159
Keywords
autism; insula; social exchange; prisoner's dilemma; fMRI; temporal parietal junction
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Funding
- National Institute of Health (NIH) [R01MH085717]
- CTSA from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences [UL1TR000445]
- NICHD [P30HD15052]
- Dan Marino Foundation
- Vanderbilt Brain Institute Clinical Neuroscience Scholars Program
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Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit impairment in reciprocal social interactions, including play, which can manifest as failure to show social preference or discrimination between social and nonsocial stimuli. To explore mechanisms underlying these deficits, we collected salivary cortisol from 42 children 8-12 years with ASD or typical development during a playground interaction with a confederate child. Participants underwent functional MRI during a prisoner's dilemma game requiring cooperation or defection with a human (confederate) or computer partner. Search region of interest analyses were based on previous research (e.g. insula, amygdala, temporal parietal junction-TPJ). There were significant group differences in neural activation based on partner and response pattern. When playing with a human partner, children with ASD showed limited engagement of a social salience brain circuit during defection. Reduced insula activation during defection in the ASD children relative to TD children, regardless of partner type, was also a prominent finding. Insula and TPJ BOLD during defection was also associated with stress responsivity and behavior in the ASD group under playground conditions. Children with ASD engage social salience networks less than TD children during conditions of social salience, supporting a fundamental disturbance of social engagement.
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