Longitudinal changes in the mismatch field evoked by an empathic voice reflect changes in the empathy quotient in autism spectrum disorder

Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's inner life, and it is an essential process in social cognition. Recent studies have focused on the difficulty of cognitive empathy (Baron-Cohen and Wheelwright, 2004; Mazza et al., 2014) and emotional empathy (Fridenson-Hayo et al., 2016; Trimmer et al., 2017) in individuals with ASD. It has been proposed that social interactive and communicative problems can be attributed to impairments in empathy (Baron-Cohen, 2002). Auditory mismatch negativity (MMN) or its magnetic mismatch field (MMF) (Sams, 1991) has been used as a neurophysiological marker for the integrity of auditory sensory memory and automatic change detection (Kujala et al., 2007).

Source: Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging - May 12, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Yuko Yoshimura, Mitsuru Kikuchi, Hirotoshi Hiraishi, Chiaki Hasegawa, Tetsu Hirosawa, Tetsuya Takahashi, Toshio Munesue, Hirotaka Kosaka, Haruhiro Hiagashida, Yoshio Minabe Source Type: research