Social brain
Do autistic adults' brains track others' beliefs differently?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
A key 'mind-reading' brain area, the right temporoparietal junction, responded less to another character's false belief in autistic adults than in controls, even though their task behaviour looked the same.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Case-control — Autistic vs neurotypical adults scanned with fMRI while doing spontaneous and explicit versions of the Buzz Lightyear ball-detection false-belief task (within-subject task version, between-subject group).
- N
- N=45 · Final fMRI sample: 24 adults with ASD and 21 controls after exclusions from 26 and 25 recruited; behavioural RT analysis used 21 ASD and 20 controls.
- Population
- Right-handed adults aged 19 to 51 with a clinical autism diagnosis, and neurotypical controls, in Belgium
- Outcome
- BOLD activity in a right temporoparietal junction region of interest and whole brain during belief formation; ball-detection reaction times
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Key findings
Across everyone, the rTPJ was more active when Buzz held a false belief, especially a false belief that the ball was present, and this pattern did not differ between the spontaneous and explicit versions. That content-specific rTPJ boost was significantly smaller in the autism group, in both versions. Whole-brain analysis found only one other group difference (the right anterior temporal pole) and no sign of extra 'compensatory' activity in autistic adults. Reaction times showed the expected belief effect, but it did not differ between groups.
Methodology
Adults with and without autism watched short cartoons in which Buzz Lightyear either saw or missed a ball moving behind a screen, then pressed a key if the ball was there. In one version participants were never told to think about Buzz's belief (spontaneous), and in a second version catch questions made them track it deliberately (explicit). The researchers measured reaction times and fMRI activity, focusing on a right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) region defined from an independent earlier study.
Limitations
The brain difference did not show up in behaviour, so the study cannot say the weaker rTPJ response actually causes everyday social difficulties. The spontaneous version always came first, so order was not counterbalanced, although the authors report a time covariate did not change the results. The sample was modest and high-functioning (all IQs above 80), several autistic participants scored below the ADOS cut-off, and rTPJ differences did not correlate with symptom severity. The task only required responding to a present ball, which may explain why the region responded mainly to beliefs about presence.
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