Altered empathy-related resting-state functional connectivity in adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders

Abstract

Empathy refers to the ability to understand other people's feelings and reacting emotionally to others. Impaired empathy has been reported in both individuals with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Despite overlaps, few studies have directly examined the neural mechanisms of impaired empathy in these two clinical groups. We used resting-state fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of empathic functioning in adolescents with ASD (N = 11), early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) (N = 20), and typically developing (TD) controls (N = 26). Their parents completed the Griffith Empathy Measure (GEM) to assess the adolescents’ empathic capacity. We found that EOS and ASD participants bot..