title: Typical and atypical neurodevelopment for face specialization: an FMRI study.
abstract: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their relatives process faces differently from typically developed (TD) individuals. In an fMRI face-viewing task, TD and undiagnosed sibling (SIB) children (5-18 years) showed face specialization in the right amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, with left fusiform and right amygdala face specialization increasing with age in TD subjects. SIBs showed extensive antero-medial temporal lobe activation for faces that was not present in any other group, suggesting a potential compensatory mechanism. In ASD, face specialization was minimal but increased with age in the right fusiform and decreased with age in the left amygdala, suggesting atypical development of a frontal-amygdala-fusiform system which is strongly linked to detecting salience and processing facial information.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurosciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Clinical Sciences Building, Room 325E, MSC 616, Charleston, SC, 29425, USA, josep@musc.edu.
authors.forename: Jane E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Joseph
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gundran
authors.forename: Faraday
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Davies
authors.forename: Jonathan D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ruble
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Glaser
authors.forename: Ramesh S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Bhatt
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000375:Aging; D000679:Amygdala / Q000502:physiology*; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000503:physiopathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D005145:Face; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D035781:Siblings / Q000523:psychology; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*