by Matt Windsor
Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are largely unresponsive to social rewards, such as smiling faces. The source of this unresponsiveness is related to differences in how the brain’s reward system functions in people with ASD and those with typical development (TD).
Carissa Cascio, Ph.D., and colleagues have found that the reward systems for children with ASD and TD perform similarly when exposed to images of hobbies or objects of interest. Their work, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, implies that there is common brain activity related to rewarding activities for all children.
The researchers took MRI brain scans of ASD and TD children. When exposed to images related to their own hobbies or interests, both groups demonstrated similar brain activity. When shown images related to other children’s interests, the TD group possessed higher levels of activity than the ASD group. These results suggest that novel, unfamiliar pictures are rewarding to typical children, but not those with ASD, whose brains respond to a narrower range of familiar rewards.
This research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (MH090232, RR024975, EY008126).
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