Face individual identity recognition : a potential endophenotype in autism
Minio-Paluello, Ilaria (University of Rome)
Porciello, Giuseppina (University of Rome)
Pascual Leone, Álvaro (Institut Germans Trias i Pujol. Institut Guttmann)
Baron-Cohen, Simon (University of Cambridge. Department of Psychiatry)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Data:	2020
Resum:	Face individual identity recognition skill is heritable and independent of intellectual ability. Difficulties in face individual identity recognition are present in autistic individuals and their family members and are possibly linked to oxytocin polymorphisms in families with an autistic child. While it is reported that developmental prosopagnosia (i. e. , impaired face identity recognition) occurs in 2-3% of the general population, no prosopagnosia prevalence estimate is available for autism. Furthermore, an autism within-group approach has not been reported towards characterizing impaired face memory and to investigate its possible links to social and communication difficulties. The present study estimated the prevalence of prosopagnosia in 80 autistic adults with no intellectual disability, investigated its cognitive characteristics and links to autism symptoms' severity, personality traits, and mental state understanding from the eye region by using standardized tests and questionnaires. More than one third of autistic participants showed prosopagnosia. Their face memory skill was not associated with their symptom's severity, empathy, alexithymia, or general intelligence. Face identity recognition was instead linked to mental state recognition from the eye region only in autistic individuals who had prosopagnosia, and this relationship did not depend on participants' basic face perception skills. Importantly, we found that autistic participants were not aware of their face memory skills. We did not test an epidemiological sample, and additional work is necessary to establish whether these results generalize to the entire autism spectrum. Impaired face individual identity recognition meets the criteria to be a potential endophenotype in autism. In the future, testing for face memory could be used to stratify autistic individuals into genetically meaningful subgroups and be translatable to autism animal models.
Ajuts:	European Commission 777394
Drets:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Llengua:	Anglès
Document:	Estudi clínic ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Matèria:	Autism ; Individual identity recognition ; Face memory ; Prosopagnosia ; Endophenotype ; Heterogeneity ; Social memory ; Theory of mind ; Emotion recognition
Publicat a:	Molecular Autism, Vol. 11 (october 2020) , ISSN 2040-2392

DOI: 10.1186/s13229-020-00371-0
PMID: 33081830

16 p, 1.1 MB

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