Social interaction often occurs in noisy environments with many extraneous sensory stimuli. This is especially relevant for youth with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who commonly experience sensory over-responsivity (SOR) in addition to social challenges. However, the relationship between SOR and social difficulties is still poorly understood and thus rarely addressed in interventions. This study investigated the effect of auditory sensory distracters on neural processing of emotion identification in youth with ASD and the effects of increasing attention to social cues by priming participants with their own emotional faces. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 30 youth with ASD and 24 typically developing (TD) age-matched controls (ages 8–17 years) identified faces as happy or angry with and without simultaneously hearing aversive environmental noises. Halfway through the task, participants also viewed videos of their own emotional faces. The relationship between parent-rated auditory SOR and brain responses during the task was also examined. Despite showing comparable behavioral performance on the task, ASD and TD youth demonstrated distinct patterns of neural activity. Compared to TD, ASD youth showed greater increases in amygdala, insula, and primary sensory regions when identifying emotions with noises compared to no sounds. After viewing videos of their own emotion faces, ASD youth showed greater increases in medial prefrontal cortex activation compared to TD youth. Within ASD youth, lower SOR was associated with reduced increased activity in subcortical regions after the prime and greater increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex after the prime, particularly in trials with noises. The results suggest that the sensory environment plays an important role in how ASD youth process social information. Additionally, we demonstrated that increasing attention to relevant social cues helps ASD youth engage frontal regions involved in higher-order social cognition, a mechanism that could be targeted in interventions. Importantly, the effect of the intervention may depend on individual differences in SOR, supporting the importance of pre-screening youth for sensory challenges prior to social interventions.

中文翻译：

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感觉分心和显着性启动对自闭症情绪识别的影响：一项功能磁共振成像研究

社交互动通常发生在具有许多外来感官刺激的嘈杂环境中。这对于患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的青少年尤其重要，他们除了面临社会挑战外，通常还会经历感觉过度反应 (SOR)。然而，SOR 与社会困难之间的关系仍然知之甚少，因此很少在干预措施中加以解决。本研究调查了听觉感官干扰物对 ASD 青少年情绪识别神经处理的影响，以及通过让参与者用自己的情绪面孔启动参与者来增加对社会线索的关注的影响。在进行功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）时，30 名患有 ASD 的青年和 24 名正常发育 (TD) 年龄匹配的对照组（年龄 8-17 岁）将面部识别为快乐或愤怒，同时听到和不听到令人厌恶的环境噪音。在任务进行到一半时，参与者还观看了他们自己情感面孔的视频。还检查了任务期间父母评定的听觉 SOR 和大脑反应之间的关系。尽管在任务中表现出相当的行为表现，但 ASD 和 TD 青年表现出不同的神经活动模式。与 TD 相比，ASD 青少年在识别有噪音的情绪时，杏仁核、脑岛和初级感觉区域的增加更多。在观看了自己情绪面孔的视频后，与 TD 青少年相比，ASD 青少年的内侧前额叶皮层激活增加更多。在 ASD 青少年中，较低的 SOR 与初始后皮质下区域的活动减少和初始后腹内侧前额叶皮层的活动增加有关，特别是在有噪音的试验中。结果表明，感官环境在 ASD 青少年处理社会信息的方式中起着重要作用。此外，我们证明，增加对相关社会线索的关注有助于 ASD 青年参与涉及高阶社会认知的额叶区域，这是一种可以作为干预目标的机制。重要的是，干预的效果可能取决于 SOR 的个体差异，这支持了在社会干预之前对青少年进行感官挑战的预先筛查的重要性。