title: Emotional modulation of perception in Asperger's syndrome.
abstract: Using an attentional blink paradigm, we show that the typical enhancement of perception for emotionally arousing events is significantly reduced in Asperger's syndrome (AS) at short inter-target intervals. Control experiments demonstrate that this finding cannot be attributed to differences in the perceived arousal of the stimuli, or to a global impairment affecting any type of modulation of perceptual encoding. Because a functioning amygdala is critical for emotional modulation of the attentional blink, the findings support a role for the amygdala in the pathophysiology of AS. More specifically, they suggest there is a fundamental failure of the amygdala to modulate processing in cortex, a concept at the heart of some recent theories of amygdala involvement in the aetiology of autistic-spectrum disorders.
authors.affiliation: Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK. bc291@cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Corden
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Chilvers
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Skuse
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000503:physiopathology; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology*; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D005712:Galvanic Skin Response / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D011932:Reading; D012660:Semantics