Altered Connectivity in Autistic Adults during Complex Facial Emotion Recognition: A Study of EEG Imaginary Coherence

Black, M. and Almabruk, T. and Albrecht, M. and Chen, N. and Lipp, O. and Tan, T. and Bolte, S. et al. 2018. Altered Connectivity in Autistic Adults during Complex Facial Emotion Recognition: A Study of EEG Imaginary Coherence, in 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), Jul 18-21 2018, pp. 2752-2755. Honolulu, HI, USA: IEEE.

Source Title

2018 40th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC)

DOI

10.1109/EMBC.2018.8512802

ISSN

1557-170X

School

School of Psychology

Remarks

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/71729

Collection

Curtin Research Publications

Abstract

Difficulties in Facial Emotion Recognition (FER) are commonly associated with individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the mechanisms underlying these impairments remain inconclusive. While atypical cortical connectivity has been observed in autistic individuals, there is a paucity of investigation during cognitive tasks such as FER. It is possible that atypical cortical connectivity may underlie FER impairments in this population. Electroencephalography (EEG) Imaginary Coherence was examined in 22 autistic adults and 23 typically developing (TD) matched controls during a complex, dynamic FER task. Autistic adults demonstrated reduced coherence between both short and long range inter-hemispheric electrodes. By contrast, short range intra-hemispheric connectivity was increased in frontal and occipital regions during FER. These findings suggest altered network functioning in ASD.