Margot Mangnus, Saskia B J Koch, Kexin Cai, Miriam Greidanus Romaneli, Peter Hagoort, Jana Bašnáková, Arjen Stolk
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
Background: While individuals with autism often face challenges in everyday social interactions, they may demonstrate proficiency in structured Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks that assess their ability to infer others' mental states. Using functional MRI and pupillometry, we investigated whether these discrepancies stem from diminished spontaneous mentalizing or broader difficulties in unstructured contexts.
Methods: Fifty-two adults diagnosed with autism and 52 neurotypical controls viewed 'Partly Cloudy', a nonverbal animated film with a dynamic social narrative known to engage the ToM brain network during specific scenes. Analysis focused on comparing brain and pupil responses to these ToM events. Additionally, dynamic intersubject correlations explored the variability of these responses throughout the film.
Results: Both groups showed similar brain and pupil responses to ToM events and provided comparable descriptions of the characters' mental states. However, participants with autism exhibited significantly stronger correlations in their responses across the film's social narrative, indicating reduced inter-individual variability. This distinct pattern emerged well before any ToM events and involved brain regions beyond the ToM network.
Conclusions: Our findings provide functional evidence of spontaneous mentalizing in autism, demonstrating this capacity in a context affording but not requiring mentalizing. Rather than responses to ToM events, a novel neurocognitive signature - inter-individual variability in brain and pupil responses to evolving social narratives - differentiated neurotypical individuals from those with autism. These results suggest that idiosyncratic narrative processing in unstructured settings, a common element of everyday social interactions, may offer a more sensitive scenario for understanding the autistic mind.
背景:虽然自闭症患者在日常社会交往中经常面临挑战,但他们在评估其推断他人心理状态的能力的结构化心智理论(ToM)任务中却能表现得游刃有余。我们使用功能性核磁共振成像和瞳孔测量法研究了这些差异是源于自发心智化的减弱,还是源于非结构化情境中更广泛的困难:52名被诊断患有自闭症的成年人和52名神经典型对照者观看了《多云》(Partly Cloudy),这是一部非语言动画电影,具有动态的社会叙事,已知在特定场景中会调动ToM大脑网络。分析的重点是比较大脑和瞳孔对这些 ToM 事件的反应。此外,受试者之间的动态相关性还探讨了这些反应在整部影片中的可变性:结果:两组受试者对 ToM 事件的大脑和瞳孔反应相似,对人物精神状态的描述也相当。然而,自闭症参与者的反应在整个影片的社会叙事中表现出明显更强的相关性,这表明个体间的变异性降低了。这种独特的模式出现在任何ToM事件之前,并涉及ToM网络以外的大脑区域:我们的研究结果为自闭症患者的自发心智化提供了功能性证据,证明了自闭症患者在能够但不需要心智化的情境中具有这种能力。一种新的神经认知特征--大脑和瞳孔对不断演变的社会叙事的反应的个体间差异性--而不是对ToM事件的反应,将神经畸形个体与自闭症患者区分开来。这些结果表明,非结构化环境中的特异性叙事处理是日常社交互动的常见元素,它可能为理解自闭症患者的心理提供了一个更敏感的场景。