Autistic adolescents show atypical activation of the brain's mentalizing system even without a prior history of mentalizing problems

Some autistic children pass classic Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks that others fail, but the significance of this finding is at present unclear. We identified two such groups of primary school age (labelled ToM+ and ToM-) and a matched comparison group of typically developing children (TD). Five years l...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychologia 2014-04, Vol.56, p.17-25
Main Authors: WHITE, Sarah J, FRITH, Uta, RELLECKE, Julian, AL-NOOR, Zainab, GILBERT, Sam J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult and adolescent clinical studies
Autistic Disorder - complications
Autistic Disorder - pathology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain - blood supply
Brain - physiopathology
Brain Mapping
Case-Control Studies
Child
Developmental Disabilities - etiology
Female
Head Movements
Humans
Image Processing, Computer-Assisted
Longitudinal Studies
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Medical sciences
Miscellaneous
Neuropsychological Tests
Oxygen - blood
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Theory of Mind
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Some autistic children pass classic Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks that others fail, but the significance of this finding is at present unclear. We identified two such groups of primary school age (labelled ToM+ and ToM-) and a matched comparison group of typically developing children (TD). Five years later we tested these participants again on a ToM test battery appropriate for adolescents and conducted an fMRI study with a story based ToM task. We also assessed autistic core symptoms at these two time points. At both times the ToM- group showed more severe social communication impairments than the ToM+ group, and while showing an improvement in mentalizing performance, they continued to show a significant impairment compared to the NT group. Two independent ROI analyses of the BOLD signal showed activation of the mentalizing network including medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate and lateral temporal cortices. Strikingly, both ToM+ and ToM- groups showed very similar patterns of heightened activation in comparison with the NT group. No differences in other brain regions were apparent. Thus, autistic adolescents who do not have a history of mentalizing problems according to our ToM battery showed the same atypical neurophysiological response during mentalizing as children who did have such a history. This finding indicates that heterogeneity at the behavioural level may nevertheless map onto a similar phenotype at the neuro-cognitive level.
ISSN:0028-3932
1873-3514
DOI:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2013.12.013