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Authors & Affiliations
Jung-Woo Son, Seungwon Cheong, Huiyeong Jeon, Hoyeon Lee, Ahjeong Hur, Yong-Wook Shin
Abstract
Purpose; We wanted to investigate how brain activation patterns of patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) differs from that of the neurotypicals (NT) in the context of perspective- taking for pain situations, and how these characteristics are related to the interoceptive accuracy of patients with ASD. Method; We presented the ASD group (N=17) and NT group (N=20) with pain-related visual situations during the fMRI scan, and ordered them 1) to imagine as if the subjects themselves were experiencing those pain situations (Self-perspective), or 2) to imagine as if a third party was experiencing those pain situations (Other-perspective). In addition, we performed the heartbeat counting task on the subjects and measured the interoceptive accruacy of each subject.Results ; In Other-perspective, the ASD group showed more pronounced brain activation than the control group in the right precuneus, the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left inferior temporal gyrus, the left amygdala, the right superior temporal gyrus, the right superior frontal gyrus, and the left caudate nucleus. And in the ASD group, interoceptive accuracy showed a negative correlation with the brain activation level in the right superior frontal gyrus (r = -.66, p = .004).Conclusion; In other's perspective-taking for pain, Autistic individuals show additional neural activities such as superior frontal gyrus and other brain areas, unlike the neurotypicals, because the self-other distinction required for perspective-taking can be difficult due to alternated interoceptive accuracy problems. These results suggest the need for interoception-related treatments for ASD to be developed in the future.