UCL (University College London) scientists
have found one possible explanation for why individuals with
Asperger’s
Syndrome spend less time paying attention to others – weaker
connections between brain areas mean that they benefit less from doing
so.
According to research published in the journal Neuroimage, the key
impairments associated with autism - including a severe lack of social
skills and an inability to relate to other people - may be caused by
poor communication between brain areas, rather than abnormalities in
brain areas as had previously been suggested.
Dr Geoff Bird, at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said:
“ The
standard view of social problems in Asperger’s Syndrome is that
there is a problem in the part of the brain that processes faces. Our
research suggests that this not the real problem: it seems to be that
paying attention to faces doesn’t lead to the normal increase
in brain activity. This is because the face processing areas of the
brain are not well connected to those parts of the brain that control
attention i.e. the frontal and parietal regions.
_ We all know that it is harder to
pick a face out of a busy crowd, for instance, but when we do find
the right face and pay attention
to it we are easily able to tune-out all the other distractions and
focus on that one face. It seems that, for people with Asperger’s
Syndrome, paying attention to a face is much harder to do and doesn’t
have the same effect.”
16 volunteers with Asperger’s Syndrome and above-average IQs
took part in the brain scanning experiment. With four images on the
screen – two of houses, two of faces – the volunteers were
asked to concentrate on either the faces or houses and had to decide
whether they were identical.
fMRI brain scans showed that there was a marked difference in brain
activity between people with Asperger’s Syndrome and a control
group. In the control group, paying attention to pictures of faces
caused a significant increase in brain activity. For the people with
Asperger Syndrome, however, paying attention to faces made no impact
at all on the brain, explaining their lack of interest in faces. People
with Asperger’s Syndrome showed the same brain reaction to houses
as controls.
The work was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC).
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