Autistic and non-autistic individuals often differ in how they perceive and show emotions, especially in their ability and inclination to infer other people’s feelings from subtle cues like facial expressions. Prominent theories of autism have suggested that these differences stem from alterations in amygdala functioning and that amygdala hypoactivation causes problems with emotion recognition. Thus far, however, empirical investigations of this hypothesis have yielded mixed results and largely relied on relatively small samples. In a sample of 72 autistic and 79 non-autistic participants, we conducted a study in which we used the Hariri paradigm to test whether amygdala activation during emotional face processing is altered in autism spectrum disorder, and whether common mental disorders like depression, ADHD or anxiety disorders influence any potential alterations in activation patterns. We found no evidence for differences in amygdala activation, neither when comparing autistic and non-autistic participants, nor when taking into account mental disorders or the overall level of functional impairment. Because we used one basic emotion processing task in a Dutch sample, results might not generalise to other tasks and other populations. Our results challenge the view that autistic and non-autistic processing of emotional faces in the amygdala is vastly different and call for a more nuanced view of differences between non-autistic and autistic emotion processing.

中文翻译：

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自闭症和非自闭症个体在情绪面孔处理过程中表现出相同的杏仁核活动

自闭症患者和非自闭症患者在感知和表达情绪的方式上通常存在差异，尤其是从面部表情等微妙线索推断他人感受的能力和倾向。著名的自闭症理论表明，这些差异源于杏仁核功能的改变，而杏仁核功能低下会导致情绪识别问题。然而，到目前为止，对该假设的实证研究产生了好坏参半的结果，并且很大程度上依赖于相对较小的样本。在 72 名自闭症患者和 79 名非自闭症参与者的样本中，我们进行了一项研究，其中我们使用哈里里范式来测试在自闭症谱系障碍中情绪面孔处理过程中杏仁核的激活是否发生改变，以及抑郁症、多动症等常见精神疾病是否发生改变。焦虑症会影响激活模式的任何潜在改变。无论是在比较自闭症和非自闭症参与者时，还是在考虑精神障碍或功能障碍的总体水平时，我们都没有发现杏仁核激活差异的证据。由于我们在荷兰样本中使用了一项基本情绪处理任务，因此结果可能无法推广到其他任务和其他人群。我们的结果挑战了自闭症和非自闭症杏仁核中情绪面孔的处理存在巨大差异的观点，并呼吁对非自闭症和自闭症情绪处理之间的差异有更细致的看法。