In this study, we describe a new form of synaesthesia in which visual perception touch elicits conscious tactile experiences the perceiver. We female subject (C) for whom observation another person being touched is experienced as stimulation on equivalent part C's own body. Apart from clearly abnormal synesthetic experience, C healthy and normal every other way. investigate whether ‘mirrored touch’ experience caused by overactivity neural system that responds to touch. A functional MRI...

Difficulties in social cognition are well recognized individuals with autism spectrum conditions (henceforth ‘autism’). Here we focus on one crucial aspect of cognition: the ability to empathize feelings another. In contrast theory mind, a capacity that has often been observed be impaired autism, much less is known about for affect sharing. Based previous data suggesting empathy deficits function interoceptive related alexithymia, aimed investigate empathic brain responses autistic and...

It is widely accepted that autism associated with disordered emotion processing and, in particular, deficits of emotional reciprocity such as impaired recognition and reduced empathy. However, a close examination the literature reveals wide heterogeneity within autistic population respect to competence. Here we argue that, where observed, impairments are due alexithymia—a condition frequently co-occurs autism—rather than feature per se. Alexithymia characterized by ability identify describe...

Abstract Autism is associated with an inability to identify and distinguish one's own feelings. We assessed this using alexithymia empathy questionnaires, used fMRI investigate brain activity while introspecting on emotion. Individuals high functioning autism/Asperger syndrome (HFA/AS) were compared matched controls. Participants rated stimuli from the International Affective Picture System twice, once according degree of un/pleasantness that pictures induced, their color balance. The groups...

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to attribute thoughts, intentions and beliefs others. This involves component processes, including cognitive perspective taking (cognitive ToM) understanding emotions (affective ToM). study assessed distinction overlap neural processes involved in these respective components, also investigated their development between adolescence adulthood. While data suggest that ToM develops adulthood, populations have not been compared on affective domains. Using fMRI...

Despite considerable research into whether face perception is impaired in autistic individuals, clear answers have proved elusive. In the present study, we sought to determine co-occurring alexithymia (characterized by difficulties interpreting emotional states) may be responsible for face-perception deficits previously attributed autism. Two experiments were conducted using psychophysical procedures relative contributions of and autism identity expression recognition. Experiment 1 showed...

The ability to represent mental states ('Theory of Mind'; ToM) is crucial in understanding individual differences social ability, and impairments evident conditions such as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).The "Reading the Mind Eyes" Test (RMET) a popular measure ToM validated part by poor performance those with ASD.However, RMET requires recognition facial emotion, which impaired alexithymia, frequently co-occurs ASD.Thus, it unclear whether indexes emotion recognition, associated or ToM,...

Alexithymia is a sub-clinical construct, traditionally characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's own emotions. Despite the clear need for interoception (interpreting physical signals from body) when emotions, little research has focused on selectivity of this impairment. While it was originally assumed that interoceptive deficit in alexithymia specific to emotion, recent evidence suggests may also be associated with perceiving some non-affective signals, such as heart...

It has been proposed that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is associated with difficulties perceiving the internal state of one's body (i.e., impaired interoception), causing socio-emotional deficits which are a diagnostic feature condition. However, research indicates alexithymia - characterized by in recognizing emotions from bodily sensations also linked to atypical interoception. Elevated rates autistic population have shown underpin several impairments thought be symptomatic ASD, raising...

Previous studies using the dot perspective task have shown that adults are slower to verify number of dots they can see in a picture when human figure picture, an avatar, different dots.This 'self--consistency effect', which occurs even avatar's is formally task--irrelevant, has been interpreted as evidence implicit mentalizing; humans think about mental states others via dedicated, automatic processes.We tested this interpretation by giving participants two versions task.In some trials,...

Background Childhood adversity is associated with significantly increased risk of psychiatric disorder. To date, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies children have mainly focused on institutionalisation and investigated conscious processing affect. Aims investigate neural response to pre-attentively presented affect cues in a community sample documented experiences maltreatment the home. Method A masked dot-probe paradigm involving pre-attentive presentation angry, happy...

Self-report plays a key role in the identification of developmental prosopagnosia (DP), providing complementary evidence to computer-based tests face recognition ability, aiding interpretation scores. However, lack standardized self-report instruments has contributed heterogeneous reporting standards for DP research. The standardization prevents comparison across samples and limits investigation relationship between objective processing measures. To address these issues, this paper...

The difficulties encountered by individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when interacting neurotypical (NT, i.e. nonautistic) are usually attributed to failure recognize the emotions and mental states of their NT interaction partner. It is also possible, however, that at least some difficulty due a read emotional ASD partners. Previous research has frequently observed deficits typical facial emotion recognition in ASD, suggesting atypical representations expressions. Relatively little...

Interoception, the perception of body's internal state, contributes to numerous aspects higher-order cognition. Several theories suggest a causal role for atypical interoception in specific psychiatric disorders, including recent claim that represents transdiagnostic impairment across disorders characterized by reduced one's own emotion (alexithymia). Such are supported predominantly evidence from only one interoceptive domain (cardiac); however, domain-specific ability highlights need...

Recent work suggests that we are better at interpreting the movements of others who move like us, and individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in a quantifiably different way from typical individuals. Therefore, "social impairments" exhibited by ASD may, least part, represent failure to infer correct mental states those ASD. To examine this possibility, adults manually directed 2 triangles generate animations depicting state interactions. Kinematic analysis generated demonstrated...

It has recently been proposed that measures of the perception state one's own body ("interoception") can be categorised as one several types depending on both how an assessment is obtained (objective measurement vs. self-report) and what assessed (degree interoceptive attention accuracy perception). Under this model, a distinction made between beliefs regarding degree to which signals are object ability perceive accurately signals. This difficult test, however, because paucity designed...