Project Summary

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D. (Distinguished Investigator 2003) of University of Wisconsin, Madison, proposes to study the underlying abnormalities in the central circuitry of emotion that are associated with specific clinical manifestations of autism.  Dr. Davidson will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during specific tasks that are designed to probe different aspects of emotion processing.  The core symptoms of autism including communication deficits, gaze aversion, social withdrawal and shyness are presumed to arise from abnormalities in the central circuitry of emotion and emotion regulation.  Past research indicates that regions of the prefrontal cortex, amygdala, anterior cingulate, and hippocampus all play important and different roles in different aspects of emotion processing.  Dr. Davidson will investigate whether a subgroup of autistic individuals have excessive activation in the amygdala in response to social stimuli compared with non-autistic control subjects.  He will compare MR signal change in response to faces that contain averted eye gaze versus those that contain eyes looking straight ahead.  He predicts that the groups will respond similarly to the averted gaze eyes but will differ in their response to faces with eyes looking straight ahead since this condition is considered to be more threatening.  He will also probe the functions of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in autistic and control subjects, as ACC has been implicated in conflict monitoring and aspects of the behavior of autistic subjects can be described as reflecting an abnormality in conflict monitoring, particularly for social-emotional information.  He predicts that autistic subjects will perform more poorly on this task and also show deficits in ACC activation compared with controls.

Program Area: PERVASIVE DEVELOPMENTAL DISORDERS\Autism

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