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Emotional Modulation of Perception in Asperger’s Syndrome

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Abstract

Using an attentional blink paradigm, we show that the typical enhancement of perception for emotionally arousing events is significantly reduced in Asperger’s syndrome (AS) at short inter-target intervals. Control experiments demonstrate that this finding cannot be attributed to differences in the perceived arousal of the stimuli, or to a global impairment affecting any type of modulation of perceptual encoding. Because a functioning amygdala is critical for emotional modulation of the attentional blink, the findings support a role for the amygdala in the pathophysiology of AS. More specifically, they suggest there is a fundamental failure of the amygdala to modulate processing in cortex, a concept at the heart of some recent theories of amygdala involvement in the aetiology of autistic-spectrum disorders.

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Acknowledgment

The authors were supported by a grant from the Wellcome Trust.

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  1. Ben Corden

    Present address: Wolfson College, Barton Road, Cambridge, CB3 9BB, UK

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioural and Brain Sciences Unit, Institute of Child Health, University College London, London, UK

    Ben Corden, Rebecca Chilvers & David Skuse

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Correspondence to Ben Corden.

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Corden, B., Chilvers, R. & Skuse, D. Emotional Modulation of Perception in Asperger’s Syndrome. J Autism Dev Disord 38, 1072–1080 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-007-0485-y

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