Fast Periodic Visual Stimulation EEG Reveals Reduced Neural Sensitivity to Fearful Faces in Children with Autism.
Stephanie Van der Donck, Milena Dzhelyova, Sofie Vettori and 4 others
PMID 31468275WHAT IT FOUND
Boys with autism showed lower brain responses to briefly seen fearful faces than typically developing boys.
Both groups responded more when looking at the mouth and to upright faces. Explicit emotion recognition was similar; matching was lower in autism.
Key findings
01Boys with autism had lower fear-detection brain responses than typically developing boys (mean amplitude 1.08 versus 1.69).
02Mouth fixation produced higher fear-detection responses than eye fixation in both groups (mean amplitude 1.76 versus 1.01).
03Explicit emotion labelling did not differ between groups, but emotion matching was lower in autism (63% versus 69%).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Only boys aged 8 to 12 were studied, and all had IQ at least 70, so results may not apply to girls, younger or older children, or autistic children with intellectual disability. The study measured a brief laboratory response to fearful faces among neutral faces. It did not show how this affects real social communication, therapy outcomes, or daily functioning. The sample was small, and the classifier was tested only by leaving participants out of the same dataset, not by independent external validation, so it should not be read as a ready-made diagnostic test. Five autism participants had ADHD and seven took medication; analyses including and excluding them did not change results, but medication and comorbidity still limit interpretation. The EEG task used static fearful faces, while the behavioural tasks used dynamic faces and labels, so the implicit and explicit measures are not directly comparable.
Declared interests
The study was funded by Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek and Excellence of Science. The supplied text does not report a commercial conflict of interest or a company that sells the treatment.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that this EEG pattern is a diagnostic test or that children with autism cannot recognise fear. The classifier was developed in a small group of boys and not externally validated, and explicit emotion labelling was similar between groups.