Improving Facial Expression Identification in ASD: a Real-time fMRI Neurofeedback Approach

Clinical research has demonstrated that ASD children have deficits in the identification and interpretation of the emotional and mental state of others (Baron-Cohen 2001). An important skill to this end (impaired in ASD patients), is to appropriately recognize and discriminate emotional expressions.

The main brain regions involved in face processing the inferior occipital gyri, lateral portion of the fusiform gyrus (especially a region deemed the fusiform face area or FFA), and posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) (Haxby et al. 2000). STS plays a key role on several basic aspects in social information processing, and deficits in ASD have been found associated to this region.

The purpose of the study is to determine the effect of neurofeedback considering a social cognition brain region (i.e. pSTS) on the identification of facial expressions in ASD patients. The intervention comprehends seven BCI sessions spread over four months. The first four sessions are weekly, and the rest monthly. In each session, the subjects are asked to imagine different facial expressions and their brain activity (i.e. BOLD activation in the pSTS region) is interpreted and used to estimate a feedback signal.The hypothesis is that the training induced up-regulation of the target region, improves clinical symptoms.