Differential responses in the mirror neuron system during imitation of individual emotional facial expressions and association with autistic traits
Weihua Zhao,
Qi Liu,
Xiaolu Zhang,
Xinwei Song,
Zhao Zhang,
Peng Qing,
Xiaolong Liu,
Siyu Zhu,
Wenxu Yang,
Keith M. Kendrick
Affiliations
Weihua Zhao
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Institute of Electronic and Information Engineering of UESTC in Guangdong, Dongguan 523808, China
Qi Liu
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Xiaolu Zhang
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Xinwei Song
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Zhao Zhang
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Peng Qing
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Xiaolong Liu
Institute of Brain and Psychological Sciences, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610066, China
Siyu Zhu
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Wenxu Yang
School of Medicine, Chengdu Women's and Children's Central Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China
Keith M. Kendrick
The Center of Psychosomatic Medicine, Sichuan Provincial Center for Mental Health, Sichuan Provincial People's Hospital, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 611731, China; Corresponding author.
The mirror neuron system (MNS), including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), inferior parietal lobule (IPL) and superior temporal sulcus (STS) plays an important role in action representation and imitation and may be dysfunctional in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, it's not clear how these three regions respond and interact during the imitation of different basic facial expressions and whether the pattern of responses is influenced by autistic traits. Thus, we conducted a natural facial expression (happiness, angry, sadness and fear) imitation task in 100 healthy male subjects where expression intensity was measured using facial emotion recognition software (FaceReader) and MNS responses were recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). Autistic traits were measured using the Autism Spectrum Quotient questionnaire. Results showed that imitation of happy expressions produced the highest expression intensity but a small deactivation in MNS responses, suggesting a lower processing requirement compared to other expressions. A cosine similarity analysis indicated a distinct pattern of MNS responses during imitation of each facial expression with functional intra-hemispheric connectivity between the left IPL and left STS being significantly higher during happy compared to other expressions, while inter-hemispheric connectivity between the left and right IPL differed between imitation of fearful and sad expressions. Furthermore, functional connectivity changes during imitation of each different expression could reliably predict autistic trait scores. Overall, the results provide evidence for distinct patterns of functional connectivity changes between MNS regions during imitation of different emotions which are also associated with autistic traits.
