An observational study in Autism Spectrum Disorder, sponsored by Yawei Cheng. Completed. Open to participants aged 13 Years to 40 Years, including healthy volunteers. Per ClinicalTrials.gov, last updated 2020-09-16.
Sponsored by Yawei Cheng · Observational
Empathy imbalance hypothesis suggests that individuals with autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) should have a deficit of cognitive empathy and a surfeit of emotional empathy. Considering that inconsistent amygdala reactivity to emotional faces might be ascribed to aberrant attention in ASD, the investigators hypothesized to investigate if there would be an imbalance between conscious and nonconscious emotional processing. This fMRI study recruited 26 youths and young adults with autism spectrum disorder and 25 matched controls, and measured their amygdala reactivity and functional connectivity in response to conscious and nonconscious (backward masked) perception of threatening faces.
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder; amygdala reactivity; emotional processing; fMRI
1,344 studies on the registry are indexed under Autistic Disorder; 334 are open to participants now.
This study's enrollment of 51 is below the median of 102 across 267 observational studies indexed under Autistic Disorder.
Browse Autistic Disorder studies →This is the only study on the registry with Yawei Cheng as lead sponsor.
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Autism group: 26 individuals with ASD meeting DSM-V criteria Control group: 25 gender, and age matched healthy controls
Exclusion Criteria:
There is no intervention to be administered in this study. Here, this fMRI study used the backwardly masked paradigm to elucidate how perceiving emotional expressions affects amygdala engagement and its related functional connectivity across two participant groups: ASD with and controls. All ASD participants were diagnosed using the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition's (DSM-5) diagnostic criteria (APA, 2013) and confirmed by clinical consensus. ASD individuals were recruited from a community autism program and referred to children's health doctors and child psychiatrists. Exclusion criteria for all participants were neurological abnormalities, a history of epilepsy or seizures, head trauma and IQ \<75. The subjects did not participate in any intervention or drug programs during the experimental period.
There is no intervention to be administered in this study. Here, this fMRI study used the backwardly masked paradigm to elucidate how perceiving emotional expressions affects amygdala engagement and its related functional connectivity across two participant groups: ASD with and controls. The participants in the age- and sex-matched control group were recruited from the local community, and screened for major psychiatric illnesses by conducting structured interviews.
Age
Age in years
Time frame: 1 minutes
Anxiety scores
State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI)
Time frame: 10 minutes
Severity of Austism-Spectrum Disorders
Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ)
Time frame: 20 minutes
Color identification task
During fMRI scanning, subjects watched emotional faces and performed the color identification task, in which they were asked to judge the color of each face (pseudo-colored in either red, yellow, or blue) and to indicate the answer by a keypad button press.
Time frame: 10 minutes
Detection task
Immediately after fMRI scanning, participants underwent the detection task, during which they were shown all of the stimuli again and alerted of the presence of fearful faces. The subjects were administered a forced-choice test under the same presentation conditions as those during scanning and asked to indicate whether they observed a fearful face or not.
Time frame: 10 minutes
fMRI response
During fMRI scanning, subjects watched emotional faces and performed the color identification task, in which they were asked to judge the color of each face (pseudo-colored in either red, yellow, or blue) and to indicate the answer by a keypad button press.
Time frame: 10 minutes
No study locations are listed for this record.
Plan to share: No
This study is completed, as verified in Sep 2020. You cannot join it, but the record below documents what was studied.
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