The ability to recognize faces and facial expressions is a common human talent. It has, however, been suggested to be impaired in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The goal of this study was to compare the processing of facial identity and emotion between individuals with ASD and neurotypicals (NTs).

Behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data from 46 young adults (aged 17–23 years, N_ASD = 22, N_NT = 24) was analysed. During fMRI data acquisition, participants discriminated between short clips of a face transitioning from a neutral to an emotional expression. Stimuli included four identities and six emotions. We performed behavioural, univariate, multi-voxel, adaptation and functional connectivity analyses to investigate potential group differences.

The ASD-group did not differ from the NT-group on behavioural identity and expression processing tasks. At the neural level, we found no differences in average neural activation, neural activation patterns and neural adaptation to faces in face-related brain regions. In terms of functional connectivity, we found that amygdala seems to be more strongly connected to inferior occipital cortex and V1 in individuals with ASD. Overall, the findings indicate that neural representations of facial identity and expression have a similar quality in individuals with and without ASD, but some regions containing these representations are connected differently in the extended face processing network.

识别面部和面部表情的能力是人类的共同才能。但是，已建议在患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的个体中受损。这项研究的目的是比较具有ASD和神经型（NTs）的个体之间面部身份和情绪的处理。

分析了来自46位年轻成年人（年龄17-23岁，_NASD  = 22，_NNT  = 24）的行为和功能磁共振成像（fMRI）数据。在fMRI数据采集过程中，参与者区分了面部的短片（从中性过渡到情感表达）。刺激包括四个身份和六个情感。我们进行了行为，单变量，多体素，适应性和功能连接性分析，以研究潜在的群体差异。

ASD组与NT组在行为身份和表达处理任务上没有什么不同。在神经水平上，我们发现平均神经激活，神经激活模式和对面部相关的大脑区域中的面孔的神经适应没有差异。在功能连接性方面，我们发现杏仁核似乎与ASD患者的枕下皮质和V1更紧密地连接。总体而言，这些发现表明，在患有和不患有ASD的个体中，面部识别和表情的神经表征具有相似的质量，但是在扩展的面部处理网络中，包含这些表征的某些区域的连接方式不同。