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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on July 2, 2009
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2009 4(3):215-226; doi:10.1093/scan/nsp017
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Autism is characterized by dorsal anterior cingulate hyperactivation during social target detection

Gabriel S. Dichter1,2,3,4, Jennifer N. Felder2 and James W. Bodfish1,2,5

1Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, CB# 7160,2Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, CB# 3366, 101 Manning Drive, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7160,3Duke-UNC Brain Imaging and Analysis Center,4Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University Medical Center, Box 3026, Durham NC 27710, and 5Center for Development and Learning, CB# 7255, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-7255, USA

Though the functional neural correlates of impaired cognitive control and social dysfunction in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been delineated, brain regions implicated in poor cognitive control of social information is a novel area of autism research. We recently reported in a non-clinical sample that detection of ‘social oddball’ targets activated a portion of the dorsal anterior cingulate gyrus and the supracalcarine cortex (Dichter, Felder, Bodfish, Sikich, and Belger, 2009). In the present investigation, we report functional magnetic resonance imaging results from individuals with ASD who completed the same social oddball task. Between-group comparisons revealed generally greater activation in the ASD group to both social and non-social targets. When responses to social and non-social targets were contrasted, the ASD group showed relatively greater activation in the right and middle inferior frontal gyri and a region in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex that abuts the dorsal anterior cingulate (Brodmann's Area 32). Further, dorsal anterior cingulate activation to social targets predicted the severity of social impairments in a subset of the ASD sample. These data suggest that the dorsal anterior cingulate mediates social target detection in neurotypical individuals and is implicated in deficits of cognitive control of social information in ASD.

Keywords: autism; fMRI; target detection; face processing; cingulate gyrus

Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Gabriel S. Dichter, Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, CB# 3366, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3366, USA. E-mail: dichter{at}med.unc.edu.

The authors would like to thank Josh Bizzell, Chris Petty, Todd Harshbarger and Syam Gadde for assistance with image analysis, Kimberly Hills for assistance with data collection, and MRI technologists Susan Music and Natalie Goutkin for assistance with data acquisition. This research was supported by the North Carolina Studies to Advance Autism Research and Treatment Center, Grant 1 U54 MH66418 from the NIH (Piven) and by the Dana Foundation (Dichter). Assistance for this study was provided by the Neuroimaging Core of the UNC Neurodevelopmental Disorders Research Center. G.D. was supported by a career development award from UNC-Chapel Hill, NIH/NCRR K12 RR023248 (Orringer) and NIMH K23 MH081285.

Received September 25, 2008. Accepted April 7, 2009.


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