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Shared Dynamic Emotional Face Processing in Children with ASD, OCD and ADHD and Controls: Data from the Pond Network

Poster Presentation
Friday, May 3, 2019: 11:30 AM-1:30 PM
Room: 710 (Palais des congres de Montreal)
M. M. Vandewouw1, E. J. Choi2, C. Hammill3, J. P. Lerch4, E. Anagnostou2 and M. J. Taylor3, (1)Neuroscience & Mental Health Program, The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada, (2)Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada, (3)The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada, (4)Mouse Imaging Centre, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON, Canada
Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is classically associated with poor face processing skills, yet increasing evidence suggest that those with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) also have difficulties with understanding emotions. We contrasted fMRI measures of emotional face processing across these three clinical paediatric groups, compared with typically developing controls. We also investigated the developmental trajectories of face processing in these groups. As facial movements underlie facial expressions of emotion, we used dynamic faces, which have been shown to improve emotion identification.

Objectives: To determine a) if the processing of emotional faces differs across three developmental disorders (NDD), and b) if the neural mechanisms underlying emotional face processing develop differently in these groups.

Methods: 223 high-functioning children aged 5-19yrs were included in the current study, 87 with ASD, 44 with ADHD, 42 with OCD, and 94 typically developing (TD) controls. The fMRI stimuli were dynamic (480ms-long) faces (neutral-to-happy, neutral-to-angry) and dynamic flowers (closed-to-open), presented in 18 pseudo-randomized blocks (6 each of happy, angry, flowers) of 13.5s on a Siemens 3T MRI using a 12-channel head coil. Subjects’ data were slice-time and motion corrected, smoothed, intensity normalized and motion scrubbed (>0.9mm framewise displacement (FD)). Signal from the white matter, CSF, whole-brain, and 6 motion parameters were regressed out, and data were bandpass filtered (0.1-0.2Hz) and de-noised with FSL’s FIX. FSL’s FEAT was used to obtain the brain response for each subject to the happy, angry and flower task conditions. FSL’s FLAME was used to investigate group-by-age interactions and group differences between the TDs and NDDs, using F-tests to examine shared differences to TDs across the NDDs, in the task condition contrasts, with sex and mean FD as covariates. Statistical images were thresholded using clusters determined by Z > 2.3 and a corrected cluster significance threshold of p = 0.05.

Results: F-tests investigating shared differences in the NDD group compared to TDs when processing happy and angry faces compared to flowers revealed shared increased activation in the right fusiform, bilateral lingual gyri and other occipital regions in the NDDs compared to TDs, with post-hoc tests revealing that this effect was being driven by the ASDs and OCDs. These two NDDs were also driving a significant F-test investigating group-by-age interactions to increased activation when processing happy compared to angry faces in the superior frontal gyrus, with ASDs and OCDs exhibiting a positive relation with age, and TDs exhibiting a negative relation. Furthermore, all three NDDs exhibited shared increased activation in the right occipital regions to happy compared to angry faces.

Conclusions: We provided evidence that children with ASD, ADHD and OCD demonstrate shared amplified activity in dynamic face processing compared to TDs, both across age and in their developmental trajectories, relying more on posterior brain regions with increases in frontal social-cognitive areas with age.

See more of: Neuroimaging
See more of: Neuroimaging