Skip to main content

Lost for emotion words: what motor and limbic brain activity reveals about autism and semantic theory.

Moseley, R., Shtyrov, Y., Mohr, B., Lombardo, M.V., Baron-Cohen, S. and Pulvermuller, F., 2014. Lost for emotion words: what motor and limbic brain activity reveals about autism and semantic theory. NeuroImage, 104, 413 - 422 .

Full text available as:

[img]
Preview
PDF
Moseley2015.pdf - Published Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.

753kB

DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.09.046

Abstract

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are characterised by deficits in understanding and expressing emotions and are frequently accompanied by alexithymia, a difficulty in understanding and expressing emotion words. Words are differentially represented in the brain according to their semantic category and these difficulties in ASC predict reduced activation to emotion-related words in limbic structures crucial for affective processing. Semantic theories view ‘emotion actions’ as critical for learning the semantic relationship between a word and the emotion it describes, such that emotion words typically activate the cortical motor systems involved in expressing emotion actions such as facial expressions. As ASC are also characterised by motor deficits and atypical brain structure and function in these regions, motor structures would also be expected to show reduced activation during emotion-semantic processing. Here we used event-related fMRI to compare passive processing of emotion words in comparison to abstract verbs and animal names in typically-developing controls and individuals with ASC. Relatively reduced brain activation in ASC for emotion words, but not matched control words, was found in motor areas and cingulate cortex specifically. The degree of activation evoked by emotion words in the motor system was also associated with the extent of autistic traits as revealed by the Autism Spectrum Quotient. We suggest that hypoactivation of motor and limbic regions for emotion word processing may underlie difficulties in processing emotional language in ASC. The role that sensorimotor systems and their connections might play in the affective and social-communication difficulties in ASC is discussed.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1053-8119
Uncontrolled Keywords:Autism; Emotion; Embodied cognition; Semantics
Group:Faculty of Science & Technology
ID Code:23097
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:22 Jan 2016 09:47
Last Modified:14 Mar 2022 13:54

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

More statistics for this item...
Repository Staff Only -