Title: | Altered responses to social chemosignals in autism spectrum disorder |
Author(s): | Endevelt-Shapira Y; Perl O; Ravia A; Amir D; Eisen A; Bezalel V; Rozenkrantz L; Mishor E; Pinchover L; Soroka T; Honigstein D; Sobel N; |
Address: | "Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. yaara.yaara@gmail.com. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. noam.sobel@weizmann.ac.il" |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41593-017-0024-x |
ISSN/ISBN: | 1546-1726 (Electronic) 1097-6256 (Linking) |
Abstract: | "Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impaired social communication, often attributed to misreading of emotional cues. Why individuals with ASD misread emotions remains unclear. Given that terrestrial mammals rely on their sense of smell to read conspecific emotions, we hypothesized that misreading of emotional cues in ASD partially reflects altered social chemosignaling. We found no difference between typically developed (TD) and cognitively able adults with ASD at explicit detection and perception of social chemosignals. Nevertheless, TD and ASD participants dissociated in their responses to subliminal presentation of these same compounds: the undetected 'smell of fear' (skydiver sweat) increased physiological arousal and reduced explicit and implicit measures of trust in TD but acted opposite in ASD participants. Moreover, two different undetected synthetic putative social chemosignals increased or decreased arousal in TD but acted opposite in ASD participants. These results implicate social chemosignaling as a sensory substrate of social impairment in ASD" |
Keywords: | "Adult Analysis of Variance Arousal/physiology Autism Spectrum Disorder/*physiopathology Emotions/*physiology Facial Expression Fear/psychology Female Hand/physiology Humans Hydrocortisone/metabolism Male *Odorants Pheromones, Human/*metabolism Saliva/chem;" |
Notes: | "MedlineEndevelt-Shapira, Yaara Perl, Ofer Ravia, Aharon Amir, Daniel Eisen, Ami Bezalel, Vered Rozenkrantz, Liron Mishor, Eva Pinchover, Liron Soroka, Timna Honigstein, Danielle Sobel, Noam eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. 2017/11/29 Nat Neurosci. 2018 Jan; 21(1):111-119. doi: 10.1038/s41593-017-0024-x. Epub 2017 Nov 27" |