An Event Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Facial Emotion Processing in Asperger Syndrome

Abstract

Background: People with Asperger syndrome (AS) have life-long deficits in social behavior. The biological basis of this is unknown, but most likely includes impaired processing of facial emotion. Human social communication involves processing different facial emotions, and at different intensities. However nobody has examined brain function in people with AS when implicitly (unconsciously) processing four primary emotions at varying emotional intensities. Methods: We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine neural responses when people with AS and controls implicitly processed neutral expressions, and mild (25%) and intense (100%) expressions of fear, disgust..