title: Emotional prosody processing in autism spectrum disorder.
abstract: Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are characterized by severe deficits in social communication, whereby the nature of their impairments in emotional prosody processing have yet to be specified. Here, we investigated emotional prosody processing in individuals with ASD and controls with novel, lifelike behavioral and neuroimaging paradigms. Compared to controls, individuals with ASD showed reduced emotional prosody recognition accuracy on a behavioral task. On the neural level, individuals with ASD displayed reduced activity of the STS, insula and amygdala for complex vs basic emotions compared to controls. Moreover, the coupling between the STS and amygdala for complex vs basic emotions was reduced in the ASD group. Finally, groups differed with respect to the relationship between brain activity and behavioral performance. Brain activity during emotional prosody processing was more strongly related to prosody recognition accuracy in ASD participants. In contrast, the coupling between STS and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) activity predicted behavioral task performance more strongly in the control group. These results provide evidence for aberrant emotional prosody processing of individuals with ASD. They suggest that the differences in the relationship between the neural and behavioral level of individuals with ASD may account for their observed deficits in social communication.
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence 'Languages of Emotion', Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Yale Child Study Center, Yale University, 230 S. Frontage Road, New Haven, CT 06519, USA.
authors.forename: Gabriela
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Rosenblau
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence 'Languages of Emotion', Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.|Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, 149 Thirteenth Street, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
authors.forename: Dorit
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kliemann
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence 'Languages of Emotion', Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin 10099, Germany.
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dziobek
authors.affiliation: Cluster of Excellence 'Languages of Emotion', Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 14195, Germany.|Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany.
authors.forename: Hauke R
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Heekeren
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000679:Amygdala / Q000503:physiopathology; D020817:Asperger Syndrome / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D001921:Brain / Q000503:physiopathology*; D002540:Cerebral Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006179:Gyrus Cinguli / Q000503:physiopathology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology; D021641:Recognition, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*; D012016:Reference Values; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013702:Temporal Lobe / Q000503:physiopathology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: autism; behavioral assessment; emotion; fMRI; prosody