Neural responses to biological motion distinguish autistic and schizotypal traits
Matthew Hudson,Severi Santavirta,Vesa Putkinen,Kerttu Seppälä,Lihua Sun,Tomi Karjalainen,Henry K. Karlsson,Jussi Hirvonen,Lauri Nummenmaa +8 more
TL;DR: Biological motion perception elicits convergent and divergent patterns of neural activity and neural synchronization, and are differentially associated with shared traits related with autism and schizophrenia in the general population, suggesting that they originate from different neural mechanisms.
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Abstract: Difficulties in social interactions are common to both autism and schizophrenia, and contribute to correlated autistic and schizotypal traits in the neurotypical population. It remains unresolved whether this represents a shared etiology or a superficial phenotypic overlap. Both conditions are associated with atypical neural activity in response to the perception of social stimuli, and also decreased neural synchronization between individuals that may prohibit establishing shared experiences. This study sought to establish if neural activity and neural synchronization associated with biological motion perception are differentially associated with autistic and schizotypal traits in the neurotypical population. Participants watched an audiovisual montage of naturalistic social interactions whilst hemodynamic brain activity was measured with fMRI. A separate sample of participants provided a continuous measure of the extent of biological motion, which was used to predict hemodynamic activity. General Linear Model analysis revealed that biological motion perception was associated with neural activity across the action-observation network. However, inter-subject phase synchronization analysis revealed that neural activity synchronized between individuals in occipital and parietal areas, but de-synchronized in temporal and frontal regions. Autistic traits were associated with a decrease in neural activity (precuneus, middle cingulate gyrus) and schizotypal traits were associated with a decrease in neural synchronization (middle and inferior frontal gyri). Biological motion perception elicits convergent and divergent patterns of neural activity and neural synchronization, and are differentially associated with shared traits related with autism and schizophrenia in the general population, suggesting that they originate from different neural mechanisms.
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Autistic traits modulate neural responses to social signals during natural vision
Qingying Ye,Jinglu Chen,Severi Santavirta,Vesa Putkinen,Juha Salmi,Lauri Nummenmaa,Qingying Ye,Jinglu Chen,Severi Santavirta,Vesa Putkinen,Juha Salmi,Lauri Nummenmaa +11 more
- 16 Oct 2025
Abstract: Abstract Impairments in social perception, a hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), are also evident at subclinical levels in the general population. However, it remains unclear how such variation in autistic traits modulate neural processing of different types of social information. Here, we investigated whether autistic traits in neurotypical individuals are associated with neural responses to a broad array of social perceptual features during viewing naturalistic stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We also tested the generalizability of these effects across two experiments. Ninety-seven participants completed the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and watched a set of 96 movie clips and a full movie during an fMRI scan. Intensity of 126 social features in the movie stimuli was continuously annotated by independent observers, and 44 most reliably rated features were used to model neural responses. We examined how consistently the responses to each social feature were dependent on the participant’s AQ scores. Replicable AQ-dependent neural responses to social features were found in both datasets. The temporal cortex and especially the superior temporal gyrus (STG), served as a central “hub” where autistic traits consistently modulated responses to social features across datasets. Different AQ subscales also revealed distinct association patterns in other brain regions. These findings indicate that autism-related traits broadly influence neural processing of naturalistic social signals, providing insight into how characteristics of autistic symptoms relate to socioemotional processing.
Level of autistic traits in neurotypical adults predicts kinematic idiosyncrasies in their biological movements
Gregory F. Lewis,Elizabeth B. daSilva,Mohammad Aghajani,Surabhi Date,Mark Jaime +4 more
TL;DR: Kinematic idiosyncrasies in social movements expressed by neurotypical adults are predicted by their level of autistic traits.
Difficulties in Emotion Recognition from Body Movements in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Han-yu Zhou,Han-yu Zhou +1 more
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