Why Autism Won't Look You in the Eye

Natalia Kleinhans, PhD

by Seattlest

This is fascinating, and thanks to the Big Blog's Scott Sunde for bringing it up: UW researchers have discovered that people with autism have a more intense response to looking at faces than the average Joe. The more social impairment, in fact, the more intense the response to someone's face.

The UW Autism Center's Natalia Kleinhans says, "What we are seeing is hyperexcitability or overarousal of the amygdala, which suggests that neurons in the amygdala are firing more than expected."

The amygdala is a little almond-shaped whozit that is mostly known as your "fight or flight" response center, but it's actually much more than that. Its emotional tagging helps you make decisions, remember things, and identify faces. Without the right emotional response, face-recognition gets a little squirrely.

On the other hand, an overactive amygdala gives you a less detailed picture of the world; it makes you more reactive first, take stock later. If it hits medium-high and stays there every time you see someone's face, it'll make looking at them uncomfortable, like you're getting joy-buzzered each time you see them. (Outside of faces, this probably also relates to the autistic tantrum or freak-out.)

These relationships between an amygdala that won't calm down and bad social skills supports the theory that, when this hyperarousal occurs, a person misses out on important cues--facial expressions, gestures, tones of voice--to interpreting what's going on socially.

Kleinhans' research abstract is here, and it mentions something else worth noting: While the amygdala in autistic subjects didn't habituate (i.e., kept going, "Oh shit! A face!") nearly as quickly as other people's, "there were no group differences in overall fusiform habituation."

The scientists had included the fusiform gyrus in their study because it's theorized that people with autism don't make a great distinction between people and things, and even prefer things to people. The fusiform gyrus is implicated in our responding to pictures of faces differently that that of a car or blender, so they were curious if it was reacting differently. It wasn't.

To us, the amygdala's hyperarousal suggests the reverse of that theory--people with autism are not robots for whom a mom and a toaster are equally useful appliances, but people who are reacting too strongly at the sight of other people. We predict a lot more emphasis on habituation techniques as this information disseminates.

Source: http://seattlest.com/2009/03/19/why_...in_the_eye.php

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