SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 2 (UPI) -- Neuroscientists looking at faces from the brain's point of view are starting to see autism in a new light.
In one convention-crashing investigation, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington came up with evidence that suggests the brain may not have developed a specific ability for understanding faces, as has long been thought.
Rather, they reported in the journal Neuron, it appears to employ the same type of recognition techniques to distinguish between individuals as it does to separate out groups of objects, be they trees, boats or foxes.
The researchers acknowledged the typical brain's uncanny knack for recognizing and reading a face. However, based on their experiments, they took issue with the common assumption that it calls on unique mechanisms to do so.
Instead, they said they found the pattern of nerve-cell activity in the so-called fusiform face area observed when a person looks at pictures of visages is similar to that followed by neurons during a viewing of objects. The patch of brain in question has been considered to be a center for recognizing and reading faces.
From their studies, it appears there's no neural strategy to deal exclusively with facial identity and expression, only a well-honed talent for the task perfected with millennia of practice, the authors hypothesized.
The view that different measures are at work in processing facial information has been based in part on observations of the so-called face-inversion effect, in which humans find it more difficult to discern the identity of a face than of an object when both are turned upside-down.
However, using a combination of computational modeling, high-powered imaging technology and behavioral tests, the investigators found evidence of similar shape-based strategies at work in the brain during both tasks.
The team said it hopes to get to the neural bottom of whatever deficits underlie the difficulties in recognizing objects or people that characterize such disorders as autism, dyslexia and schizophrenia.
Clues to that mystery could solve the riddle of how to target therapies to the specific needs of the millions of individuals with these conditions, the researchers said.
Among investigators pursuing this intriguing line of inquiry is Ralph Adolphs, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
He has been awarded a $120,000 grant from Cure Autism Now to investigate specifically how patients with autism process facial information.
Adolphs has been studying the role of an almond-shaped brain structure called the amygdala in disorders that make it difficult to interpret the emotions of others. He will focus on determining how this emotion-regulating area may relate to autism.
If the problem in autism is not entirely an inability to read faces but rather to focus enough attention on them to be able to do so, uncovering any biological mechanisms responsible could have significant implications for social rehabilitation, scientists said.
Such therapy might include, for example, telling a patient exactly where and how to look at someone, down to every eye movement, researchers said.
"There is a tremendous amount of research effort currently being directed towards understanding the causes and correlates of autism spectrum disorders," said Aysenil Belger, director of neuroimaging research in psychiatry and associate professor in the departments of psychiatry and psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
"Researchers ... are taking a multi-pronged approach to studying autism by examining possible genetic linkages, abnormalities in neurotransporter systems, as well as structural and functional brain imaging variations in autism," she told United Press International. "These efforts should give a sense of hope to families of affected individuals."
She continued: "Furthermore, there is also considerable evidence accumulating about the aspects of the neural circuitry that are 'normal' or functioning similarly in autistic individuals ... suggesting that perhaps some of the behavioral or clinical changes may be associated with abnormal utilization of these circuits and regions.
"Finally, some of the new studies ... may enable identification of individuals in the highest-risk categories very early on, and potentially devise treatment or management strategies that may either delay or significantly diminish the negative impact of these social-cognitive deficits, enabling autistic children without mental retardation to benefit from educational as well as social developmental opportunities in the early formational years of life, during the critical developmental window between 0 and 5 years."
Belger said she and her team plan to replicate and extend the findings as well as evaluate the effect of behavioral treatments on face processing, first in adults, then, ideally, in children between 18 months and 24 months old, when symptoms often are first detected.
In another surprising twist that may portend new treatment approaches, researchers have noted a lack of a link between an autistic person's ability to read and recognize a face.
The study participants with a normal ability to identify famous faces had just as much difficulty discerning expressions of happiness, sadness, anger and fear as those who had poor face recognition, the investigators said in the journal Neurology.
There was, however, a correlation between the ability to interpret feelings expressed on a visage and in a voice or gesture, they said.
It may be people with autism have problems discerning emotions rather than simply assessing faces, the authors proposed.
Understanding how and where in the brain various types of emotional cues are processed might lead to ways to help autistic people shed any impediments to normal social interaction, they concluded.
(Note: In this multi-part installment, based on dozens of reports, conferences and interviews, Ped Med is keeping an eye on autism, taking a backward glance at its history and surrounding controversies, facing facts revealed by research and looking forward to treatment enhancements and expansions. Wasowicz is the author of the new book, "Suffer the Child: How the Healthcare System Is Failing Our Future," published by Capital Books.)
Next: Autism and nerve cell insulation
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