Embodied representations of emotional expressions in ASD

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterised by social interaction and communication impairments, as well as repetitive and restricted patterns of behaviour (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). Recent research suggests that differences in representations of emotional expressions might play a role in ASD. Evidence for early atypical modulation of emotional expressions in visual areas has been shown (Batty et al.,2011). Moreover, recent research has highlighted that impaired embodied representations of emotions might also be atypical in ASD. In fact, reduced embodied simulation of emotional expressions in ASD has been highlighted by neuroimaging studies (Dapretto et al., 2006) and physiological responses to social stimuli seem to be atypical in ASD individuals (Hirsten & Ramachandran, 2001). Nevertheless, a selective impairment of embodied representations of emotional expressions in the somatosensory cortex in ASD has not been investigated yet. Our methodology combines Visual and Somatosensory Evoked Potentials (VEPs and SEPs) to isolate embodiment effects driven by somatosensory or visual processing. This methodology has already provided evidences of the involvement of the somatosensory cortex in processing emotional expressions in typical populations (Sel et al., 2014), and we are now interested in investigating whether ASD population show different patterns of responses compared to typical population. We are measuring visual and somatosensory responses in two groups of ASD and TD while they perform visual emotion recognition task and a control gender recognition task. Preliminary data will be presented, we expect to find a differential modulation of emotional expressions in the visual and somatosensory evoked potentials across the two groups.