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International audience; How do we understand the emotional content of written words? Here, we investigate the hypothesis that written words that carry emotions are processed through phylogenetically ancient neural circuits that are involved in the processing of the very same emotions in nonlanguage contexts. This hypothesis was tested with respect to disgust. In an fMRI experiment, it was found that the same region of the left anterior insula responded whether people observed facial expressions of disgust or whether they read words with disgusting content. In a follow-up experiment, it was found that repetitive TMS over the left insula in comparison with a control site interfered with the processing of disgust words to a greater extent than with the processing of neutral words. Together, the results support the hypothesis that the affective processes we experience when reading rely on the reuse of phylogenetically ancient brain structures that process basic emotions in other domains and species.

Interpreting emotional expressions appropriately poses a challenge for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, difficulties with emotional processing in ASD are more pronounced in contexts where emotional expressions are subtle, automatic, and reflexive—that is, implicit. In contrast, explicit emotional processing, which requires the cognitive evaluation of an emotional experience, appears to be relatively intact in individuals with ASD. In the present study, we examined the brain activation and functional connectivity differences underlying explicit and implicit emotional processing in age- and IQ-matched adults with (n = 17) and without (n = 15) ASD. Results indicated: (1) significantly reduced levels of brain activation in participants with ASD in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) during implicit emotion processing; (2) significantly weaker functional connectivity in the ASD group in connections of the MPFC with the amygdala, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and fusiform gyrus; (3) No group difference in performance accuracy or reaction time; and (4) Significant positive relationship between empathizing ability and STG activity in ASD but not in typically developing participants. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying implicit, but not explicit, emotion processing may be altered at multiple levels in individuals with ASD. Autism Res 2015. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The nervous system gives preferential treatment to objects near the hands that are candidates for action. It is not yet understood how this process is achieved. Here we show evidence for the mechanism that underlies this process having used an experimental technique that maps the use of spatial frequencies (SFs) during object recognition across time. We used this technique to replicate and characterize with greater precision the coarse-to-fine SF sampling observed in previous studies. Then we show that the visual processing of real-world objects near an observer's hands is biased toward the use of low-SF information, around 288 ms. Conversely, high-SF information presented around 113 ms impaired object recognition when objects were presented near the hands. Notably, both of these effects happened relatively late during object recognition and suggest that the modulation of SF use by hand position is at least partly attentional in nature. (PsycINFO Database Record

In neurotypical observers, it is widely believed that the visual system samples the world in a coarse-to-fine fashion. Past studies on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) have identified atypical responses to fine visual information but did not investigate the time course of the sampling of information at different levels of granularity (i.e. Spatial Frequencies, SF). Here, we examined this question during an object recognition task in ASD and neurotypical observers using a novel experimental paradigm. Our results confirm and characterize with unprecedented precision a coarse-to-fine sampling of SF information in neurotypical observers. In ASD observers, we discovered a different pattern of SF sampling across time: in the first 80 ms, high SFs lead ASD observers to a higher accuracy than neurotypical observers, and these SFs are sampled differently across time in the two subject groups. Our results might be related to the absence of a mandatory precedence of global information, and to top-down processing abnormalities in ASD.

Anatomical and functional brain studies have converged to the hypothesis that autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with atypical connectivity. Using a modified resting-state paradigm to drive subjects' attention, we provide evidence of a very marked interaction between ASD brain functional connectivity and cognitive state. We show that functional connectivity changes in opposite ways in ASD and typicals as attention shifts from external world towards one's body generated information. Furthermore, ASD subject alter more markedly than typicals their connectivity across cognitive states. Using differences in brain connectivity across conditions, we ranked brain regions according to their classification power. Anterior insula and dorsal-anterior cingulate cortex were the regions that better characterize ASD differences with typical subjects across conditions, and this effect was modulated by ASD severity. These results pave the path for diagnosis of mental pathologies based on functional brain networks obtained from a library of mental states. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. Fil: Barttfeld, Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina Fil: Wicker, Bruno. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique; Francia Fil: Cukier, Sebastián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina Fil: Navarta, Silvana Elisa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Lew, Sergio Eduardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentina Fil: Leiguarda, Ramón Carlos. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina Fil: Sigman, Mariano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina

Autism is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairment of communication and social interaction, as well as by high levels of repetitive and ritualistic behaviours. This last dimension results in major difficulties in daily life: clinical reports of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show that they present tantrums as a response to change, or restricted interests and repetitive behaviours in order to prevent or minimize change. Such a crucial need to maintain sameness suggests substantial differences in how the ASD brain predicts the environment, and this might have a fundamental role in the deficit revealed in the highly unpredictable social world. Several lines of evidence indicating difficulties in generating or using predictions in ASD due to atypical information processing will be presented in this review. For instance, several studies have revealed that people with ASD demonstrate a unique profile of cognitive abilities, with strategies that depend to an abnormally large extent on sensory systems, at the expense of more integrative processing requiring an awareness of contextual subtleties necessary for prediction. At a more elementary level, patients with autism manifest unusual processing of unpredictable events, which might be rooted in a basic difference in how the brain orients to changing, novel sensory stimuli. This review presents results from ERPs and fMRI studies illustrating the psychophysiological mechanisms and neural bases underlying such phenomena in ASD. We propose that such dysfunction in the ability to build flexible prediction in ASD may originate from impaired top-down influence over a variety of sensory and higher level information processing, a physiopathological hypothesis which dovetails with the cortical under connectivity current theory.

Resume Objectif Aucun outil n’est disponible en France pour le depistage des troubles du spectre de l’autisme sans deficience intellectuelle (« Autisme de Haut Niveau » ou Syndrome d’Asperger, ici nommes « TED SDI »). L’utilisation de test de depistage par des cliniciens « de premiere ligne » permettrait de mieux detecter les enfants susceptibles d’avoir de tels troubles et d’ameliorer leur prise en charge. Au Royaume-Uni, 3 questionnaires ont ete evalues : Quotient du spectre de l’autisme (AQ), Quotient d’empathie (EQ), et Quotient de systematisation (SQ). Nous avons traduit ces 3 questionnaires et proposons leur methode d’evaluation en France aupres d’adolescents TED SDI et d’adolescents temoins. Methode La traduction du questionnaire en francais a necessite deux traductions simultanees, deux retro-traductions et deux reunions d’harmonisation. Il s’agit d’une etude transversale comparant les scores obtenus avec les trois questionnaires AQ, EQ et SQ remplis par les parents de 4 groupes d’adolescents : 100 adolescents TED SDI (50 avec QI ≥ 85 et 50 avec 70 ≤ QI Resultats Au total, 580 questionnaires ont ete envoyes a 40 centres recruteurs en date du 28/02/2010 et 277 questionnaires ont ete recus : TED SDI : 70 (70 %) ; TP : 25 (50 %) et T : 182 (91 %). Dans le groupe temoin, 92 filles (moyenne 14,4 ± 1,7 ans) et 66 garcons (14,5 ± 1,7 ans) ont ete enregistres avec des donnees validees et saisies. Dans le groupe TED SDI, 4 filles (14,3 ± 2,4 ans) et 42 garcons (14,5 ± 1,7 ans) ont ete recrutes. Une fille (81) et 6 garcons (72,2 ± 7,7) ont un QI compris entre 70 et 85 et 3 filles (95,3 ± 4,2) et 36 garcons (102,9 ± 12) ont un QI superieur a 85. Dans le groupe TP, 9 filles (15,9 ± 1,7 ans) et 4 garcons (15,8 ± 1,9 ans) ont ete recrutes. Conclusion L’objectif de cette etude est de mettre a disposition en francais les questionnaires AQ, EQ et SQ pour les cliniciens francophones. Cette etude permettra d’evaluer avec rigueur l’interet du questionnaire AQ pour le depistage des TED SDI chez les adolescents.

Physicians frequently face ethical dilemmas when caring for patients. To help them to cope with these, biomedical ethics aims to implement moral norms for particular problems and contexts. As a means of studying the cognitive and neurobiological features underlying the respect for these norms, moral cognitive neuroscience could help us to understand and improve ethical questioning. The article reviews recent developments in the field and presents neurobiological arguments to highlight why some moral rules are universally shared and why some ethical responses are very dependent on context.

Recent empirical findings suggest a significant influence of emotion on memory processes. Surprisingly, although emotion-processing difficulties appear to be a hallmark feature in autism spectrum disorders (ASD), their impact on higher-level cognitive functions, such as memory, has not been directly studied in this population. The aim of this study was to address this issue by assessing whether the emotional valence of visual scenes affects recall skills in high-functioning individuals with ASD. To this purpose, their recall performance of neutral and emotional pictures was compared with that of typically developing adults (control group). Results revealed that while typically developing individuals showed enhanced recall skills for negative relative to positive and neutral pictures, individuals with ASD recalled the neutral pictures as well as the emotional ones. Findings of this study thus point to reduced influence of emotion on memory processes in ASD than in typically developing individuals, possibly owing to amygdala dysfunctions.

In humans and monkeys the mirror neuron system transforms seen actions into our inner representation of these actions. Here we asked if this system responds also if we see an industrial robot perform similar actions. We localised the motor areas involved in the execution of hand actions, presented the same subjects blocks of movies of humans or robots perform a variety of actions. The mirror system was activated strongly by the sight of both human and robotic actions, with no significant differences between these two agents. Finally we observed that seeing a robot perform a single action repeatedly within a block failed to activate the mirror system. This latter finding suggests that previous studies may have failed to find mirror activations to robotic actions because of the repetitiveness of the presented actions. Our findings suggest that the mirror neuron system could contribute to the understanding of a wider range of actions than previously assumed, and that the goal of an action might be more important for mirror activations than the way in which the action is performed. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This study aimed to explore the perception of different components of biological movement in individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. The ability to recognize a person's actions, subjective states, emotions, and objects conveyed by moving point-light displays was assessed in 19 participants with autism and 19 comparable typical control participants. Results showed that the participants with autism were as able as controls to name point-light displays of non-human objects and human actions. In contrast, they were significantly poorer at labeling emotional displays, suggesting that they are specifically impaired in attending to emotional states. Most studies have highlighted an emotional deficit in facial expression perception; our results extend this hypothesized deficit to the perception and interpretation of whole-body biological movements.

Watching the movie scene in which a tarantula crawls on James Bond's chest can make us literally shiver—as if the spider crawled on our own chest. What neural mechanisms are responsible for this “tactile empathy”? The observation of the actions of others activates the premotor cortex normally involved in the execution of the same actions. If a similar mechanism applies to the sight of touch, movies depicting touch should automatically activate the somatosensory cortex of the observer. Here we found using fMRI that the secondary but not the primary somatosensory cortex is activated both when the participants were touched and when they observed someone or something else getting touched by objects. The neural mechanisms enabling our own sensation of touch may therefore be a window also to our understanding of touch.

What neural mechanism underlies the capacity to understand the emotions of others? Does this mechanism involve brain areas normally involved in experiencing the same emotion? We performed an fMRI study in which participants inhaled odorants producing a strong feeling of disgust. The same participants observed video clips showing the emotional facial expression of disgust. Observing such faces and feeling disgust activated the same sites in the anterior insula and to a lesser extent in the anterior cingulate cortex. Thus, as observing hand actions activates the observer's motor representation of that action, observing an emotion activates the neural representation of that emotion. This finding provides a unifying mechanism for understanding the behaviors of others.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) time series analysis and statistical inferences about the effect of a cognitive task on the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) are largely based on the linear model. However, this method requires that the error vector is a gaussian variable with an identity correlation matrix. When this assumption cannot be accepted, statistical inferences can be made using generalized least squares. In this case, knowledge of the covariance matrix of the error vector is needed. In the present report, we propose a method that needs stationarity of the autocorrelation function but is more flexible than autoregressive model of order p (AR(p)) models because it is not necessary to predefine a relation between coefficients of the correlation matrix. We tested this method on sets of simulated data (with presence of an effect of interest or not) representing a time series with a monotonically decreasing autocorrelation function. This time series mimicked an experiment using a random event-related design that does not create correlation between scans. The autocorrelation function is empirically determined and used to reconstitute the correlation matrix as the toeplitz matrix built from the autocorrelation function. When applied to simulated time series with no effect of interest, this method allows the determination of F values corresponding to the accurate false positive level. Moreover, when applied to time series with an effect of interest, this method gives a density function of F values which allows the rejection of the null hypothesis. This method provides a flexible but interpretable time domain noise model.

Interpreting emotional expressions appropriately poses a challenge for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In particular, difficulties with emotional processing in ASD are more pronounced in contexts where emotional expressions are subtle, automatic, and reflexive-that is, implicit. In contrast, explicit emotional processing, which requires the cognitive evaluation of an emotional experience, appears to be relatively intact in individuals with ASD. In the present study, we examined the brain activation and functional connectivity differences underlying explicit and implicit emotional processing in age- and IQ-matched adults with (n = 17) and without (n = 15) ASD. Results indicated: (1) significantly reduced levels of brain activation in participants with ASD in medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and superior temporal gyrus (STG) during implicit emotion processing; (2) significantly weaker functional connectivity in the ASD group in connections of the MPFC with the amygdala, temporal lobe, parietal lobe, and fusiform gyrus; (3) No group difference in performance accuracy or reaction time; and (4) Significant positive relationship between empathizing ability and STG activity in ASD but not in typically developing participants. These findings suggest that the neural mechanisms underlying implicit, but not explicit, emotion processing may be altered at multiple levels in individuals with ASD.

We used a parametric experimental design to identify the rCBF variations related to a continuous variation of the attention load. The experiment involved goal-directed visual tasks. The length of time during which the subject's attention was engaged toward the external stimulus was taken as the factor of interest. The neural network revealed areas that positively (left cerebellum, bilateral MT/V5 complex and superior parietal lobule, right inferior temporal lobe and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) or negatively (precuneus, anterior cingulate and medial superior frontal cortex) correlate with the attention load. Results demonstrate that the activity of these areas varies continuously as a function of the variation in the attention load.

Visual object recognition is of fundamental importance in our everyday interaction with the environment. Recent models of visual perception emphasize the role of top-down predictions facilitating object recognition via initial guesses that limit the number of object representations that need to be considered. Several results suggest that this rapid and efficient object processing relies on the early extraction and processing of low spatial frequencies (SF). The present study aimed to investigate the SF content of visual object representations and its modulation by contextual and affective values of the perceived object during a picture-name verification task. Stimuli consisted of pictures of objects equalized in SF content and categorised as having low or high affective and contextual values. To access the SF content of stored visual representations of objects, SFs of each image were then randomly sampled on a trial-by-trial basis. Results reveal that intermediate SFs between 14 and 24 cycles per object (2.3 to 4 cycles per degree) are correlated with fast and accurate identification for all categories of objects. Moreover, there was a significant interaction between affective and contextual values over the SFs correlating with fast recognition. These results suggest that affective and contextual values of a visual object modulate the SF content of its internal representation, thus highlighting the flexibility of the visual recognition system.

Mutual gaze may be described as a psychological process during which two persons have the feeling of a brief link between their two minds. In the monkey, specific cell assemblies in the superior temporal cortex of the brain are responsive to gaze. This suggests that the brain may have evolved mechanisms for interpreting direct eye contact. These mechanisms could depend on the activation of specific brain regions. Positron emission tomography was used to measure activity in brain regions in healthy volunteers while they were looking at faces featuring, respectively, eye contact, averted gaze, or no gaze. As expected a region known to be involved in face processing was found to be activated in the ventral occipito-temporal region, especially in the right hemisphere. Averted gaze and mutual gaze triggered blood flow responses in similar areas which were different from those involved in face processing. These areas included the occipital part of the fusiform gyrus, the right parietal lobule, the right inferior temporal gyrus, and the middle temporal gyrus in both hemispheres. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that perception of eyes regardless of the direction of the gaze is subserved by a distributed network. However, no conclusive evidence was found for specific area(s) devoted to mutual gaze processing.

The degree of correspondence between objective performance and subjective beliefs varies widely across individuals. Here we demonstrate that functional brain network connectivity measured before exposure to a perceptual decision task covaries with individual objective (type-I performance) and subjective (type-II performance) accuracy. Increases in connectivity with type-II performance were observed in networks measured while participants directed attention inward (focus on respiration), but not in networks measured during states of neutral (resting state) or exogenous attention. Measures of type-I performance were less sensitive to the subjects’ specific attentional states from which the networks were derived. These results suggest the existence of functional brain networks indexing objective performance and accuracy of subjective beliefs distinctively expressed in a set of stable mental states. Fil: Barttfeld, Pablo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina; Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale. Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit; Francia; Fil: Wicker, Bruno. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Unité Mixte de Recherche. Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone; Francia; Fil: McAleer, Phil. Glasgow University. Department of Psychology; Reino Unido; Fil: Belin, Pascal. Glasgow University. Department of Psychology; Reino Unido; Fil: Cojan, Yann Corentin. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina; Fil: Graziano, Martín. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina; Fil: Leiguarda, Ramón Carlos. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina; Fil: Sigman, Mariano. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina; Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Física. Laboratorio de Neurociencia Integrativa; Argentina; Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina

Psychopathy is a personality disorder frequently associated with immoral behaviors. Previous behavioral studies on the influence of psychopathy on moral decision have yielded contradictory results, possibly because they focused either on judgment (abstract evaluation) or on choice of hypothetical action, two processes that may rely on different mechanisms. In this study, we explored the influence of the level of psychopathic traits on judgment and choice of hypothetical action during moral dilemma evaluation. A population of 102 students completed a questionnaire with ten moral dilemmas and nine non-moral dilemmas. The task included questions targeting both judgment (Is it acceptable to. in order to.) and choice of hypothetical action (Would you.in order to.). The level of psychopathic traits of each participant was evaluated with the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy (LSRP) scale. Logistic regression fitted with the generalized estimating equations method analyses were conducted using responses to the judgment and choice tasks as the dependent variables and psychopathy scores as predictor. Results show that a high level of psychopathic traits, and more specifically those related to affective deficit, predicted a greater proportion of utilitarian responses for the choice but not for the judgment question. There was no first-order interaction between the level of psychopathic traits and other potential predictors. The relation between a high level of psychopathic traits and increased utilitarianism in choice of action but not in moral judgment may explain the contradictory results of previous studies where these two processes were not contrasted. It also gives further support to the hypothesis that choice of action endorsement and abstract judgment during moral dilemma evaluation are partially distinct neural and psychological processes. We propose that this distinction should be better taken into account in the evaluation of psychopathic behaviors. © 2013 Tassy, Deruelle, Mancini,Leistedt and Wicker., SCOPUS: ar.j, info:eu-repo/semantics/published

Learning what behaviour is appropriate in a specific context by observing the actions of others and their outcomes is a key constituent of human cognition, because it saves time and energy and reduces exposure to potentially dangerous situations. Observational learning of associative rules relies on the ability to map the actions of others onto our own, process outcomes, and combine these sources of information. Here, we combined newly developed experimental tasks and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate the neural mechanisms that govern such observational learning. Results show that the neural systems involved in individual trial-and-error learning and in action observation and execution both participate in observational learning. In addition, we identified brain areas that specifically activate for others' incorrect outcomes during learning in the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC), the anterior insula and the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS).

Humans daily face social situations involving conflicts between competing moral decision. Despite a substantial amount of studies published over the past 10 years, the respective role of emotions and reason, their possible interaction, and their behavioural expression during moral evaluation remains an unresolved issue. A dualistic approach to moral evaluation proposes that the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFc) controls emotional impulses. However, recent findings raise the possibility that the right DLPFc processes emotional information during moral decision making. We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to transiently disrupt rDLPFc activity before measuring decision making in the context of moral dilemmas. Results reveal an increase of the probability of utilitarian responses during objective evaluation of moral dilemmas in the rTMS group (compared to a SHAM one). This suggests that the right DLPFc function not only participates to a rational cognitive control process, but also integrates emotions generated by contextual information appraisal, which are decisive for response selection in moral judgements. © The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press.

Objectif: Aucun outil n’est disponible en France pour le dépistage des troubles du spectre de l’autisme sans déficience intellectuelle (« Autisme de Haut Niveau » ou Syndrome d’Asperger, ici nommés « TED SDI »). L’utilisation de test de dépistage par des cliniciens « de première ligne » permettrait de mieux détecter les enfants susceptibles d’avoir de tels troubles et d’améliorer leur prise en charge. Au Royaume-Uni, 3 questionnaires ont été évalués : Quotient du spectre de l’autisme (AQ), Quotient d’empathie (EQ), et Quotient de systématisation (SQ). Nous avons traduit ces 3 questionnaires et proposons leur méthode d’évaluation en France auprès d’adolescents TED SDI et d’adolescents témoins.Méthode. La traduction du questionnaire en français a nécessité deux traductions simultanées, deux rétro-traductions et deux réunions d’harmonisation. Il s’agit d’une étude transversale comparant les scores obtenus avec les trois questionnaires AQ, EQ et SQ remplis par les parents de 4 groupes d’adolescents : 100 adolescents TED SDI (50 avec QI ≥ 85 et 50 avec 70 ≤ QI < 85), 50 adolescents ayant un autre trouble psychiatrique (TP), et 200 adolescents témoins (T).Résultats. Au total, 580 questionnaires ont été envoyés à 40 centres recruteurs en date du 28/02/2010 et 277 questionnaires ont été reçus : TED SDI : 70 (70 %) ; TP : 25 (50 %) et T : 182 (91 %). Dans le groupe témoin, 92 filles (moyenne 14,4 ± 1,7 ans) et 66 garçons (14,5 ± 1,7 ans) ont été enregistrés avec des données validées et saisies. Dans le groupe TED SDI, 4 filles (14,3 ± 2,4 ans) et 42 garçons (14,5 ± 1,7 ans) ont été recrutés. Une fille (81) et 6 garçons (72,2 ± 7,7) ont un QI compris entre 70 et 85 et 3 filles (95,3 ± 4,2) et 36 garçons (102,9 ± 12) ont un QI supérieur à 85. Dans le groupe TP, 9 filles (15,9 ± 1,7 ans) et 4 garçons (15,8 ± 1,9 ans) ont été recrutés.Conclusion. L’objectif de cette étude est de mettre à disposition en français les questionnaires AQ, EQ et SQ pour les cliniciens francophones. Cette étude permettra d’évaluer avec rigueur l’intérêt du questionnaire AQ pour le dépistage des TED SDI chez les adolescents.

Over the last years, increasing evidence has fuelled the hypothesis that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a condition of altered brain functional connectivity. The great majority of these empirical studies relies on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) which has a relatively poor temporal resolution. Only a handful of studies has examined networks emerging from dynamic coherence at the millisecond resolution and there are no investigations of coherence at the lowest frequencies in the power spectrum-which has recently been shown to reflect long-range cortico-cortical connections. Here we used electroencephalography (EEG) to assess dynamic brain connectivity in ASD focusing in the low-frequency (delta) range. We found that connectivity patterns were distinct in ASD and control populations and reflected a double dissociation: ASD subjects lacked long-range connections, with a most prominent deficit in fronto-occipital connections. Conversely, individuals with ASD showed increased short-range connections in lateral-frontal electrodes. This effect between categories showed a consistent parametric dependency: as ASD severity increased, short-range coherence was more pronounced and long-range coherence decreased. Theoretical arguments have been proposed arguing that distinct patterns of connectivity may result in networks with different efficiency in transmission of information. We show that the networks in ASD subjects have less Clustering coefficient, greater Characteristic Path Length than controls - indicating that the topology of the network departs from small-world behaviour - and greater modularity. Together these results show that delta-band coherence reveal qualitative and quantitative aspects associated with ASD pathology. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. Fil: Barttfeld, Pablo. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Wicker, Bruno. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Cukier, Sebastián. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Fundación para la Lucha contra las Enfermedades Neurológicas de la Infancia; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Navarta, Silvana Elisa. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Lew, Sergio Eduardo. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad de Buenos Aires; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Física de Buenos Aires; Argentina

Although alterations of emotion processing are recognized as a core component of autism, the level at which alterations occur is still debated. Discrepant results suggest that overt assessment of emotion processing is not appropriate. In this study, skin conductance response (SCR) was used to examine covert emotional processes. Both behavioural responses and SCRs of 16 adults with an autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) were compared to those of 16 typical matched adults. Participants had to judge emotional facial expressions, the age of faces or the direction of a moving object. Although behavioural performance was similar in the two populations, individuals with an ASD exhibited lower SCRs than controls in the emotional judgement task. This suggests that such individuals may rely on different strategies due to altered autonomic processing. Furthermore, failure to produce normal physiological reactions to emotional faces may be related to social impairments in individuals with an ASD.

Several recent studies suggest that autism may result from abnormal communication between brain regions. We directly assessed this hypothesis by testing the presence of abnormalities in a model of the functional cerebral network engaged during explicit emotion processing in adults with high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome. Comparison of structural equation models revealed abnormal patterns of effective connectivity, with the prefrontal cortex as a key site of dysfunction. These findings provide evidence that abnormal long-range connectivity between structures of the 'social brain' could explain the socio-emotional troubles that characterize the autistic pathology.

Observational learning allows individuals to acquire knowledge without incurring in the costs and risks of discovering and testing. The neural mechanisms mediating the retrieval of rules learned by observation are currently unknown. To explore this fundamental cognitive ability, we compared the brain responses when retrieving visuomotor associations learned either by observation or by individual learning. To do so, we asked eleven adults to learn two sets of arbitrary visuomotor associations: one set was learned through the observation of an expert actor while the other was learned by trial and error. During fMRI scanning, subjects were requested to retrieve the visuomotor associations previously learned under the two modalities. The conjunction analysis between the two learning conditions revealed a common brain network that included the ventral and dorsal lateral prefrontal cortices, the superior parietal lobe and the pre-SMA. This suggests the existence of a mirror-like system responsible for the storage of rules learned either by trial and error or by observation of others' actions. In addition, the pars triangularis in the right prefrontal cortex (BA45) was found to be selective for rules learned by observation. This suggests a preferential role of this area in the storage of rules learned in a social context.

Summary The premotor and parietal mirror neuron system (MNS) is thought to contribute to the understanding of observed actions by mapping them onto "corresponding" motor programs of the observer [1–24], but how would the MNS respond to the observation of hand actions if the observer never had hands? Would it not show changes of blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal, because the observer lacks motor programs that can resonate [12, 25, 26], or would it show significant changes because the observer has motor programs for the foot or mouth with corresponding goals [15, 17, 19, 27, 28]? We scanned two aplasic subjects, born without arms or hands, while they watched hand actions and compared their brain activity with that of 16 control subjects. All subjects additionally executed actions with different effectors (feet, mouth, and, for controls, hands). The BOLD signal of aplasic individuals within the putative MNS was augmented when they watched hand actions, demonstrating the brain's capacity to mirror actions that deviate from the embodiment of the observer by recruiting voxels involved in the execution of actions that achieve corresponding goals by different effectors. This sheds light on the functional organization of the MNS and predominance of goals in imitation.

International audience; The affective prediction hypothesis assumes that visual expectation allows fast and accurate processing of emotional stimuli. The prediction corresponds to what an object is likely to be. It therefore facilitates its identification by setting aside what the object is unlikely to be. It has then been suggested that prediction might be inevitably associated with the inhibition of irrelevant possibilities concerning the object to identify. Several studies highlighted that the facilitation of emotional perception depends on low spatial frequency (LSF) extraction. However, most of them used paradigms in which only the object to identify was present in the scene. As a consequence, there have yet been no studies investigating the efficiency of prediction in the visual perception of stimuli among irrelevant information. In this study, we designed a novel priming emotional Stroop task in which participants had to identify emotional facial expressions (EFEs) presented along with a congruent or incongruent word. To further investigate the role of early extraction of LSF information in top-down prediction during emotion recognition, the target EFE was primed with the same EFE filtered in LSF or high spatial frequency (HSF). Results reveal a reduction of the Stroop interference in the LSF compared to the HSF priming condition, which supports that visual expectation, depending on early LSF information extraction, facilitates the inhibition of irrelevant information during emotion recognition.

Objective: A link between the brain dopaminergic (DA) system and emotional processing seems to be supported by the DA nature of neural systems surrounding emotional recognition, the occurrence of emotional deficits in medical disorders involving a DA dysfunction, and the effect of DA agonists or antagonists on emotional processing. The authors tested the influence of levodopa administration on emotional processing in a functional MRI (fMRI) study of 10 elderly volunteers. Methods: A placebo-controlled, cross-over experimental design was used. Subjects received either levodopa (100 mg) or placebo in 2 fMRI sessions. Performance was evaluated with a passive facial emotion perception test. Results: During the placebo situation, the region-of-interest (ROI) analysis showed that emotional processing activated the bilateral amygdala. In levodopa volunteers, this activation was missing. The statistical comparison between the 2 situations (emotional vs control condition) revealed a highly significant reduction in activation of the bilateral amygdala for the levodopa fMRI session (P corrected

What neural mechanism underlies the capacity to understand the emotions of others? Does this mechanism involve brain areas normally involved in experiencing the same emotion? We performed an fMRI study in which participants inhaled odorants producing a strong feeling of disgust. The same participants observed video clips showing the emotional facial expression of disgust. Observing such faces and feeling disgust activated the same sites in the anterior insula and to a lesser extent in the anterior cingulate cortex. Thus, as observing hand actions activates the observer's motor representation of that action, observing an emotion activates the neural representation of that emotion. This finding provides a unifying mechanism for understanding the behaviors of others.

Neuroimaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) are widely used to identify the cerebral correlates of cognitive tasks. The resting state presents the advantage to serve as a reference in all experiments but is also an ill-defined mental state because it may vary both from one subject to another and within the same subject. The most challenging question concerns the areas whose activity (revealed by PET or fMRI imaging) is greater in rest state than in an active condition. The present work reports the result of a meta-analysis including five previously published studies. The five different tasks involved are the following: attribution of intention, judgement of stimulus pleasantness, discrimination of spatial attributes, judgement of other peoples' belief and perception of gaze. For each study, the general linear model was used to assess statistical difference and a contrast resting state minus other conditions was calculated. The intersection of the five contrasts was used to search for the variation jointly observed across the different experiments. This lead to a reduced number of clusters: one cluster in the lower/anterior part of the cingulate gyrus and four clusters located in the medial/superior frontal gyrus, along the superior frontal sulcus. We discuss the location of these areas with respect to the location of activations induced by different tasks: externally focused attention, memory, general reasoning, theory of mind and self-referential tasks. We observed that medial prefrontal cortex exhibits a lower activity when the subject's attention is focused towards the external world than when the subject has to additionally refer to some internal states. By contrast, this activity is greater during resting state than during both externally directed and internally directed attention. Thus, we hypothesize that during rest, the subject is in a state where he refers only to his own self.

Watching the movie scene in which a tarantula crawls on James Bond's chest can make us literally shiver--as if the spider crawled on our own chest. What neural mechanisms are responsible for this "tactile empathy"? The observation of the actions of others activates the premotor cortex normally involved in the execution of the same actions. If a similar mechanism applies to the sight of touch, movies depicting touch should automatically activate the somatosensory cortex of the observer. Here we found using fMRI that the secondary but not the primary somatosensory cortex is activated both when the participants were touched and when they observed someone or something else getting touched by objects. The neural mechanisms enabling our own sensation of touch may therefore be a window also to our understanding of touch.

The eye region and gaze behaviour are known to play a major role in conveying information about direction of attention and emotional dispositions. Positron emission tomography scanning was used to explore the cerebral structures involved while subjects were asked to attribute hostile or friendly intentions to video-taped actors who directed attention towards or away from the subjects. As expected, a number of brain regions known to be involved in emotion processing was found activated when subjects had to attribute an emotion regardless of gaze direction. In addition, results indicate that gaze direction has an impact on the brain regions recruited to interpret emotions. The anterior region of the superior temporal gyrus (STG) was selectively activated during analysis of emotions through eye contact. This result provides neurophysiological evidence for privileged processing when an individual becomes personally involved as the object of another's emotions.

Background As evidenced in the DSM-V, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often characterized by atypical sensory behavior (hyper- or hypo-reactivity), but very few studies have evaluated olfactory abilities in individuals with ASD. Methods Fifteen adults with ASD and 15 typically developing participants underwent olfactory tests focused on superficial (suprathreshold detection task), perceptual (intensity and pleasantness judgment tasks), and semantic (identification task) odor processing. Results In terms of suprathreshold detection performance, decreased discrimination scores and increased bias scores were observed in the ASD group. Furthermore, the participants with ASD exhibited increased intensity judgment scores and impaired scores for pleasantness judgments of unpleasant odorants. Decreased identification performance was also observed in the participants with ASD compared with the typically developing participants. This decrease was partly attributed to a higher number of near misses (a category close to veridical labels) among the participants with ASD than was observed among the typically developing participants. Conclusions The changes in discrimination and bias scores were the result of a high number of false alarms among the participants with ASD, which suggests the adoption of a liberal attitude in their responses. Atypical intensity and pleasantness ratings were associated with hyperresponsiveness and flattened emotional reactions, respectively, which are typical of participants with ASD. The high number of near misses as non-veridical labels suggested that categorical processing is functional in individuals with ASD and could be explained by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. These findings are discussed in terms of dysfunction of the olfactory system.

Objective: The Empathy Quotient (EQ) is a self-report that was developed to measure the cognitive and affective aspects of empathy. We further evaluated its validity in 2 studies. Method: The psychometric qualities of the French version of the EQ, and its correspondence with 2 other measures of empathy (Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Empathy Scale of the Impulsiveness-Venturesomeness-Empathy Questionnaire), and with dimensions of the emotional state (depression and anxiety), were evaluated in a sample of 410 students (201 men and 209 women). Second, the clinical validity of the EQ was investigated in participants expected to have dysfunctional empathy. For this purpose, EQ scores of 16 people with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) were collected. Results: The EQ showed satisfying internal, convergent, test–retest and discriminant validity. The confirmatory factorial analyses suggested a 3-factor structure offered a good fit to the data. The women's superiority in empathy was replicated. As expected, the ASD EQ scores were very low. Conclusion: This study provides further evidence that the EQ is reliable in this population and should be recommended to estimate empathy problems, notably in individuals with troubled interpersonal interaction patterns. Objectif: Le quotient d'empathie (QE) est une autodéclaration qui a été élaborée pour mesurer les aspects cognitifs et affectifs de l'empathie. Nous en avons aussi évalué la validité dans 2 études. Méthode: Les qualités psychométriques de la version française du QE, et sa correspondance à 2 autres mesures de l'empathie (l'indice de réactivité interpersonnelle et l'échelle d'empathie du questionnaire sur l'impulsivité, l'esprit d'aventure, l'empathie), ainsi qu'à des dimensions de l'état émotionnel (dépression et anxiété), ont été évaluées dans un échantillon de 410 étudiants (201 hommes et 209 femmes). Deuxièmement, la validité clinique du QE a été vérifiée chez les participants qu'on prévoyait avoir une empathie dysfonctionnelle. À cette fin, les scores de QE de 16 personnes souffrant du trouble du spectre de l'autisme (TSA) ont été recueillis. Résultats: Le QE a démontré une validité interne, convergente, test-retest et discriminante satisfaisante. Les analyses factorielles confirmatoires suggéraient qu'une structure à 3 facteurs convenait bien aux données. La supériorité des femmes en empathie a été reproduite. Comme prévu, les scores de QE dans le TSA étaient très faibles. Conclusion: Cette étude amène d'autres données probantes que le QE est un instrument fiable qui devrait être recommandé pour estimer les problèmes d'empathie, notamment chez les personnes présentant des modèles problématiques d'interaction person.