Training People With Autism To Recognize Faces

Main Category: Autism
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 18 Apr 2008 - 3:00 PDT

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Researchers might have gained insight into why people with autism have difficulty remembering faces and distinguishing facial emotion. In an ongoing study, Dr. Nim Tottenham, assistant professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, is examining how normal and autistic brains behave when viewing a face.

While their brain is scanned in an fMRI machine, subjects look at a computer screen displaying different faces with various facial expressions. Each subject is motivated by a visual cue -- a star symbol -- to draw his or her attention to either the eyes or mouth on each face.

Facial recognition areas in the brain are recorded by the fMRI, and eye movements are tracked with a camera. Early data in both healthy and autistic subjects show that only when a subject looks at the eyes does the facial recognition area of the brain become active.

The research team hopes that early intervention with this behavioral technique in autistic children might help to train the brain to focus on others' eyes in order to improve facial recognition and facial emotion early in life.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, located in New York City, is one of the leading academic medical centers in the world, comprising the teaching hospital NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medical College, the medical school of Cornell University. NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell provides state-of-the-art inpatient, ambulatory and preventive care in all areas of medicine, and is committed to excellence in patient care, education, research and community service. Weill Cornell physician-scientists have been responsible for many medical advances -- from the development of the Pap test for cervical cancer to the synthesis of penicillin, the first successful embryo-biopsy pregnancy and birth in the U.S., the first clinical trial for gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, the first indication of bone marrow's critical role in tumor growth, and, most recently, the world's first successful use of deep brain stimulation to treat a minimally-conscious brain-injured patient. NewYork-Presbyterian, which is ranked sixth on the U.S.News & World Report list of top hospitals, also comprises NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Westchester Division and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/The Allen Pavilion. Weill Cornell Medical College is the first U.S. medical college to offer a medical degree oversees and maintains a strong global presence in Austria, Brazil, Haiti, Tanzania, Turkey and Qatar.

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital
Weill Cornell Medical Center