Impaired Brain Activity Linked to Inability to Regulate Emotions in Autism

Although symptoms such as temper tantrums, irritability, self-injury, depression and anxiety are associated with autism, they are not considered core symptoms of the disorder. In a recent study, published in the Journal of Autism Developmental Disorder, researchers from the UNC School of Medicine found that improving prefrontal cortex activity could directly help autistic people regulate their emotions and improve serious symptoms associated with the disorder. The discovery shows that symptoms related to emotion regulation have a biological explanation that can be visualized using fMRI. During the study, participants viewed a series of pictures of human faces with no expression. Partway through viewing each picture, participants were asked to generate positive thoughts about the picture, or generate negative thoughts, or leave their emotional response unchanged. Researchers found that in the control group, the prefrontal cortex worked hard to modulate an emotional response, originating in the limbic system. However, the brain scans of the participants with autism were different. “The prefrontal cortex did not come online to the same extent,” said a lead author of the study. “It was as though the brain region that’s needed to work hard to regulate emotional responses couldn’t activate to the same degree as it did in people without autism. This limited activation of the prefrontal cortex, not surprisingly, resulted in less modulation of the limbic regions.” Future intervention research based on these findings could use cognitive behavior techniques to improve emotion regulation abilities for people with autism or brain simulation techniques to improve activity in the prefrontal cortex during emotion regulation. To read more about this study, click here.