title: Dissociating animacy processing in high-functioning autism: neural correlates of stimulus properties and subjective ratings.
abstract: When movements indicate meaningful actions, even nonbiological objects induce the impression of "having a mind" or animacy. This basic social ability was investigated in adults with high-functioning autism (HFA, n = 13, and matched controls, n = 13) by systematically varying motion properties of simple geometric shapes. Critically, trial-by-trial variations of (1) motion complexity of stimuli, and of (2) participants' individual animacy ratings were separately correlated with neural activity to dissociate cognitive strategies relying more closely on stimulus analysis vs. subjective experience. Increasing motion complexity did not yield any significant group differences, and in both groups, it correlated with neural activity in regions involved in perceptual and evaluative processing, including the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), superior temporal gyrus (STG) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). In contrast, although there were no significant behavioral differences between the groups, increasing animacy ratings correlated with neural activity in the insula, STG, amygdala, dorsal mPFC and PCC more strongly in controls than in HFA. These results indicate that in HFA the evaluation of stimulus properties cuing for animacy is intact, while increasing subjective ratings do not seem to be robustly related to social processing, including spontaneous mental state inferences and experience of salience.
authors: a Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine-Ethics in the Neurosciences (INM-8) , Research Center Juelich , Juelich , Germany.
authors: Bojana
authors: B
authors: Kuzmanovic
authors: Leonhard
authors: L
authors: Schilbach
authors: Alexandra L
authors: AL
authors: Georgescu
authors: Hanna
authors: H
authors: Kockler
authors: Natacha S
authors: NS
authors: Santos
authors: N Jon
authors: NJ
authors: Shah
authors: Gary
authors: G
authors: Bente
authors: Gereon R
authors: GR
authors: Fink
authors: Kai
authors: K
authors: Vogeley
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000503:physiopathology; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009039:Motion Perception; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012938:Social Perception; D056345:Theory of Mind; D055815:Young Adult