Sex differences in social brain neural responses in autism: temporal profiles of configural face-processing within data-driven time windows.
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Face-processing timing differences may underlie visual social attention differences between autistic and non-autistic people, and males and females. This study investigates the timing of the effects of neurotype and sex on face-processing, and their dependence on age. We analysed EEG data during upright and inverted photographs of faces from 492 participants from the Longitudinal European Autism Project (141 neurotypical males, 76 neurotypical females, 202 autistic males, 73 autistic females; age 6-30 years). We detected timings of sex/diagnosis effects on event-related potential amplitudes at the posterior-temporal channel P8 with Bootstrapped Cluster-based Permutation Analysis and conducted Growth Curve Analysis (GCA) to investigate the timecourse and dependence on age of neural signals. The periods of influence of neurotype and sex overlapped but differed in onset (respectively, 260 and 310 ms post-stimulus), with sex effects lasting longer. GCA revealed a smaller and later amplitude peak in autistic female children compared to non-autistic female children; this difference decreased in adolescence and was not significant in adulthood. No age-dependent neurotype difference was significant in males. These findings indicate that sex and neurotype influence longer latency face processing and implicates cognitive rather than perceptual processing. Sex may have more overarching effects than neurotype on configural face processing.
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Acknowledgements: This research received funding from the Medical Research Council (Grant Numbers MR/K021389/1 and MR/T003057/1 for MJ, TC and EJHJ), UKRI (Grant Number MR/S036423/1for EJHJ and TDB), and Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777394 for the project AIMS-2-TRIALS. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and AUTISM SPEAKS, Autistica, SFARI. M-CL is supported by the Academic Scholars Award from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research Sex and Gender Science Chair (GSB 171373). The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. Any views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funders.
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research Sex and Gender Science Chair (GSB 171373) Academic Scholars Award from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto
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2045-2322
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Medical Research Council (MR/S036423/1)
Medical Research Council (MR/K021389/1)