The DOI matches its Crossref record; 60 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Role of the Amygdala in Atypical Gaze on Emotional Faces in Autism Spectrum Disorders
Open accessAbstract
Reduced focus toward the eyes is a characteristic of atypical gaze on emotional faces in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Along with the atypical gaze, aberrant amygdala activity during face processing compared with neurotypically developed (NT) participants has been repeatedly reported in ASD. It remains unclear whether the previously reported dysfunctional amygdalar response patterns in ASD support an active avoidance of direct eye contact or rather a lack of social attention. Using a recently introduced emotion classification task, we investigated eye movements and changes in blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the amygdala with a 3T MRI scanner in 16 autistic and 17 control adult human participants. By modulating the initial fixation position on faces, we investigated changes triggered by the eyes compared with the mouth. Between-group interaction effects revealed different patterns of gaze and amygdalar BOLD changes in ASD and NT: Individuals with ASD gazed more often away from than toward the eyes, compared with the NT group, which showed the reversed tendency. An interaction contrast of group and initial fixation position further yielded a significant cluster of amygdala activity. Extracted parameter estimates showed greater response to eyes fixation in ASD, whereas the NT group showed an increase for mouth fixation. The differing patterns of amygdala activity in combination with differing patterns of gaze behavior between groups triggered by direct eye contact and mouth fixation, suggest a dysfunctional profile of the amygdala in ASD involving an interplay of both eye-avoidance processing and reduced orientation.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
The cited source says what the claim attributes to it.
In the citing paper
“These results were replicated by Kliemann et al. (2012), who also report increased amygdala activity in ASD in response to attention to eyes, and, moreover, subsequent gaze avoidance as measured by the frequency of shifting attention away from the eye region.”
From Atypical attentional networks and the emergence of autism (2013) · cites this paper as Kliemann et al., 2012
In the citing paper
“For example, patients on the autism spectrum typically fail to solicit and reciprocate eye contact [40,43-45].”
From Neurons in the Monkey Amygdala Detect Eye Contact during Naturalistic Social Interactions (2014) · cites this paper as [43]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Advances in functional and structural MR image analysis and implementation as FSL
Smith, S. M., Jenkinson, M., Woolrich, M. W., Beckmann, C. F., Behrens, T. E. J., Johansen-Berg, H., Bannister, P. R., De Luca, M., Drobnjak, I., Flitney, D. E., et al. (2004) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2004.07.051 · Cited by 13,630
Lord, C., Rutter, M., & Le Couteur, A. (1994) · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · doi:10.1007/bf02172145 · Cited by 9,065
A global optimisation method for robust affine registration of brain images
Jenkinson, M., & Smith, S. M. (2001) · Medical Image Analysis · doi:10.1016/s1361-8415(01)00036-6 · Cited by 7,018
Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Skinner, R., Martin, J., & Clubley, E. (2001) · Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders · doi:10.1023/a:1005653411471 · Cited by 6,450 · cited 1×
“Within the social symptomatology in ASD, processing information from the eyes seems to be specifically impaired (Leekam et al., 1998; Baron-Cohen et al., 2001b).”
BackgroundBaron‐Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001) · Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry · doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00715 · Cited by 4,555
Baron‐Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S. J., Hill, J., Raste, Y., & Plumb, I. (2001) · PubMed · Cited by 4,313
Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F., & Cohen, D. (2002) · Archives of General Psychiatry · doi:10.1001/archpsyc.59.9.809 · Cited by 2,120
Gaze fixation and the neural circuitry of face processing in autism
Dalton, K. M., Nacewicz, B. M., Johnstone, T., Schaefer, H. S., Gernsbacher, M. A., Goldsmith, H. H., Alexander, A. L., & Davidson, R. J. (2005) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1421 · Cited by 1,543
A mechanism for impaired fear recognition after amygdala damage
Adolphs, R., Gosselin, F., Buchanan, T. W., Tranel, D., Schyns, P., & Damasio, A. R. (2005) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature03086 · Cited by 1,331 · cited 1×
“These patients showed reduced reflexive orientation toward the eyes when looking at faces on photographs or videos (Adolphs et al., 2005; Adolphs, 2007; Spezio et al., 2007).”
BackgroundSocial intelligence in the normal and autistic brain: An fMRI study
Baron‐Cohen, S., Ring, H. A., Wheelwright, S., Bullmore, E. T., Brammer, M. J., Simmons, A., & Williams, S. C. R. (1999) · European Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1046/j.1460-9568.1999.00621.x · Cited by 1,320
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Gloor P (1997) The amygdaloid system. In: The temporal lobe and limbic system (Gloor P, ed), pp 5591-5721. New York: Oxford UP.
- McDonald AJ (1992) Cell types and intrinsic connections of the amygdala. In: The amygdala: neurobiological aspects of emotion, memory, and mental dysfunction (Aggleton J, ed), pp 67-96. New York: Wiley.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The Role of Emotion Regulation in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Mazefsky, C. A., Herrington, J., Siegel, M., Scarpa, A., Maddox, B. B., Scahill, L., & White, S. W. (2013) · Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/j.jaac.2013.05.006 · Cited by 881
Neuroimaging in autism spectrum disorder: brain structure and function across the lifespan
Ecker, C., Bookheimer, S. Y., & Murphy, D. (2015) · The Lancet Neurology · doi:10.1016/s1474-4422(15)00050-2 · Cited by 574
Saygin, Z. M., Kliemann, D., Iglesias, J. E., van der Kouwe, A. J. W., Boyd, E. C., Reuter, M., Stevens, A. A., Leemput, K. V., McKee, A. C., Frosch, M. P., et al. (2017) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2017.04.046 · Cited by 469
Self-citationVitamin D hormone regulates serotonin synthesis. Part 1: Relevance for autism
Patrick, R. P., & Ames, B. N. (2014) · The FASEB Journal · doi:10.1096/fj.13-246546 · Cited by 414
Atypical attentional networks and the emergence of autism
Keehn, B., Müller, R.-A., & Townsend, J. (2013) · Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2012.11.014 · Cited by 412
Metadata
- Authors
- Kliemann, D., Dziobek, I., Hatri, A., Baudewig, J., & Heekeren, H. R.
- Affiliations
- Freie Universität Berlin (DE)
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Venue
- Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2012-07-11
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 28
- Pages
- 9469-9476
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6622276
- OpenAlex
- W2064718313
- Cited by
- 183
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 16 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 8.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (EXC 302)
- Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (01GW0723, EXC 302)
- Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Autism Spectrum Disorder Research
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Action Observation and Synchronization
- Keywords
- autism spectrum disorder, amygdala, gaze behavior, emotional face processing, eye contact, social attention, BOLD signal, fixation position, emotion classification
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Amygdala, Analysis of Variance, Autistic Disorder, Emotions, Face, Female, Fixation, Ocular, Humans, Image Processing, Computer-Assisted, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Oxygen, Photic Stimulation, Reaction Time, Recognition, Psychology, Young Adult
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
