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. 2016 Jul 7;11(7):e0158804.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158804. eCollection 2016.

Atypical Asymmetry for Processing Human and Robot Faces in Autism Revealed by fNIRS

Corinne E Jung  1 , Lars Strother  1 , David J Feil-Seifer  2 , Jeffrey J Hutsler  1
Affiliations

Atypical Asymmetry for Processing Human and Robot Faces in Autism Revealed by fNIRS

Corinne E Jung et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Deficits in the visual processing of faces in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals may be due to atypical brain organization and function. Studies assessing asymmetric brain function in ASD individuals have suggested that facial processing, which is known to be lateralized in neurotypical (NT) individuals, may be less lateralized in ASD. Here we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to first test this theory by comparing patterns of lateralized brain activity in homologous temporal-occipital facial processing regions during observation of faces in an ASD group and an NT group. As expected, the ASD participants showed reduced right hemisphere asymmetry for human faces, compared to the NT participants. Based on recent behavioral reports suggesting that robots can facilitate increased verbal interaction over human counterparts in ASD, we also measured responses to faces of robots to determine if these patterns of activation were lateralized in each group. In this exploratory test, both groups showed similar asymmetry patterns for the robot faces. Our findings confirm existing literature suggesting reduced asymmetry for human faces in ASD and provide a preliminary foundation for future testing of how the use of categorically different social stimuli in the clinical setting may be beneficial in this population.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Examples of stimuli.
The robot face task consisted of robots with distinct head shapes and key facial feature landmarks. Reprinted from Elaine Short under a CC BY license, with permission from Elaine Short, original copyright 2014.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Array depicting placement of emitter (E) and detector (D) probes over back of head.
Fig 3
Fig 3. HbO z-scores for the human faces condition for both groups.
The NT group shows greater right hemisphere lateralization than the ASD group. All error bars represent standard error of the mean.
Fig 4
Fig 4. HbO z-scores for the robotic face condition for both groups.
The groups do not differ in lateralized activation. All error bars represent standard error of the mean.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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