Structural Connectivity and Emotion Recognition Impairment in Children and Adolescents with Chromosome 22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome.
Ashley F P Sanders, Diana A Hobbs, Tracey A Knaus and 1 others
PMID 35917023WHAT IT FOUND
Children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome struggled to identify angry and happy faces, especially when surrounded by fearful faces.
Brain scans showed tighter wiring in the right amygdala-fusiform pathway, which partially explained these social and emotional recognition difficulties.
Key findings
01Children with 22q11.2DS had significantly lower accuracy identifying angry and happy faces, and when distractor faces showed fear, compared to typically developing controls.
02Brain imaging revealed higher fractional anisotropy in the right amygdala-fusiform pathway for children with 22q11.2DS, a structural difference that partially mediated their emotion recognition and social skill deficits.
03Parents reported significantly lower social skills for children with 22q11.2DS compared to controls, independent of the brain connectivity findings.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study is cross-sectional, meaning it captures a single moment in time and cannot track how brain connectivity or social skills change as the children develop. Researchers did not account for psychotropic medication use, which may influence both brain structure and emotional processing. Parent-reported social skills measures may not capture all aspects of social impairment, such as asocial behaviors. The analysis focused only on specific brain pathways hypothesized to be affected, potentially overlooking other regions involved in emotion processing.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the higher fractional anisotropy in the right amygdala-fusiform pathway as evidence of superior brain connectivity. In this context, it reflects atypical structural organization associated with poorer emotion recognition, not a functional advantage.