Reward and empathy in autism

自闭症患者的奖励和同理心

• 批准号: G1100359/1
• 负责人: Bhismadev Chakrabarti
• 金额: $ 61.42万
• 依托单位: University of Reading
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=G1100359%2F1
• 关键词: Reward; empathy; autism

Empathy is a natural capacity hardwired into the human brain that we use to understand others emotions and respond appropriately to them. We automatically smile on seeing a baby smile and feel our heart beat faster as a runner dashes to a close finish. This automatic mimicking is a simple measure of how much we empathise with what we are seeing. People with autism do not tend to show this automatic mimicry, and score poorly on other measures of empathy. One explanation for low empathy in autism is that people with autism do not empathise with others because they do not find social stimuli (e.g. human faces) innately pleasing/rewarding. An alternative explanation suggests quite the opposite, in that people with autism do not find social stimuli rewarding because of their lack of empathy.The proposed research will test the relationship between these two hypotheses in a sample of typical adults, and in a sample of adults with autism, by measuring the activity of their facial muscles (facial Electromyography (EMG)) and brains (functional MRI), while they watch emotion expressions of other people. Facial EMG provides a direct measure of automatic mimicking, by measuring the minute changes in the activity of facial muscles. Functional MRI provides a direct method to measure the real-time activity of the brain regions involved in processing rewards and mimicking. Specifically, these experiments will testa) if increasing the reward value of a face leads to increased automatic mimicking of the face,b) if mimicking target faces makes them more rewarding than non-mimicked faces, andc) what the differences are in the above processes between people with and without autism.These studies would lead to a better understanding of the nature of empathy and its connection with reward, and contribute to understanding the causal mechanisms that underlie atypical social behaviour in autism. Current therapies for autism rely on various forms of reward conditioning, where people with autism are rewarded for certain types of behaviour. However, how reward conditioning relates to social behaviour is largely unknown. By systematically examining the link between these two processes, this research could potentially inform and enhance the development of therapies for autism.

同理心是人类大脑固有的一种自然能力，我们用它来理解他人的情绪，并对他们做出适当的反应。看到婴儿的微笑，我们会不由自主地微笑；看到赛跑运动员冲向终点时，我们会感到心跳加快。这种自动模仿是衡量我们对所见事物感同身受程度的一种简单方法。自闭症患者往往不会表现出这种自动模仿，在其他同理心测试中得分也很低。对自闭症患者低同理心的一种解释是，自闭症患者不会对他人产生同理心，因为他们不会觉得社会刺激（例如人脸）天生令人愉悦/有益。另一种解释恰恰相反，因为自闭症患者缺乏同理心，所以他们不会觉得社会刺激是有益的。拟议的研究将通过测量他们的面部肌肉（面部肌电图（EMG））和大脑（功能性核磁共振成像）的活动，在典型成年人和自闭症成年人的样本中测试这两种假设之间的关系，当他们观察其他人的情绪表达时。面部肌电图通过测量面部肌肉活动的微小变化，提供了自动模仿的直接测量方法。功能性核磁共振成像提供了一种直接的方法来测量参与处理奖励和模仿的大脑区域的实时活动。具体来说，这些实验将测试：(1)增加一张脸的奖励值是否会导致对脸的自动模仿增加；(2)模仿目标脸是否比未模仿的脸更有奖励；(3)自闭症患者和非自闭症患者在上述过程中有什么不同。这些研究将有助于更好地理解共情的本质及其与奖励的联系，并有助于理解自闭症非典型社会行为背后的因果机制。目前对自闭症的治疗依赖于各种形式的奖励条件反射，即自闭症患者因某些类型的行为而获得奖励。然而，奖励条件反射与社会行为之间的关系在很大程度上是未知的。通过系统地检查这两个过程之间的联系，这项研究可能会为自闭症治疗的发展提供信息和促进。