American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Publishing, 2013).
McPartland, J., Dawson, G., Webb, S. J., Panagiotides, H. & Carver, L. J. Event-related brain potentials reveal anomalies in temporal processing of faces in autism spectrum disorder. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry 45, 1235–1245 (2004).
Webb, S. J. et al. The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials: initial evaluation of a battery of candidate EEG biomarkers. Am. J. Psychiatry 0, appi.ajp.21050485 (2022).
Kang, E. et al. Atypicality of the N170 event-related potential in autism spectrum disorder: a meta-analysis. Biol. Psychiatry Cogn. Neurosci. Neuroimaging 3, 657–666 (2018).
Dawson, G., Webb, S. J. & McPartland, J. Understanding the nature of face processing impairment in autism: insights from behavioral and electrophysiological studies. Dev. Neuropsychol. 27, 403–424 (2005).
Chevallier, C., Kohls, G., Troiani, V., Brodkin, E. S. & Schultz, R. T. The social motivation theory of autism. Trends Cogn. Sci. 16, 231–239 (2012).
Taddei, M., Tettamanti, M., Zanoni, A., Cappa, S. & Battaglia, M. Brain white matter organisation in adolescence is related to childhood cerebral responses to facial expressions and harm avoidance. NeuroImage 61, 1394–1401 (2012).
Courchesne, E. et al. Unusual brain growth patterns in early life in patients with autistic disorder: an MRI study. Neurology 57, 245–254 (2001).
Courchesne, E., Carper, R. & Akshoomoff, N. Evidence of brain overgrowth in the first year of life in autism. JAMA 290, 337–344 (2003).
Hazlett, H. C. et al. Early brain overgrowth in autism associated with an increase in cortical surface area before age 2 years. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 68, 467–476 (2011).
Frazier, T. W. & Hardan, A. Y. A meta-analysis of the corpus callosum in autism. Biol. Psychiatry 66, 935–941 (2009).
Koldewyn, K. et al. Differences in the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus but no general disruption of white matter tracts in children with autism spectrum disorder. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 111, 1981–1986 (2014).
Courchesne, E. & Pierce, K. Why the frontal cortex in autism might be talking only to itself: local over-connectivity but long-distance disconnection. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 15, 225–230 (2005).
Koshino, H. et al. fMRI investigation of working memory for faces in autism: visual coding and underconnectivity with frontal areas. Cereb. Cortex 18, 289–300 (2007).
Just, M. A., Keller, T. A., Malave, V. L., Kana, R. K. & Varma, S. Autism as a neural systems disorder: a theory of frontal-posterior underconnectivity. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36, 1292–1313 (2012).
Courchesne, E. et al. Neuron number and size in prefrontal cortex of children with autism. JAMA 306, 2001–2010 (2011).
Nebel, M. B. et al. Disruption of functional organization within the primary motor cortex in children with autism. Hum. Brain Mapp. 35, 567–580 (2014).
Adolphs, R. Social cognition and the human brain. Trends Cogn. Sci. 3, 469–479 (1999).
Griffin, J. W. & Motta-Mena, N. V. in Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (eds Shackelford, T. & Weekes-Shacklelford, V. A.) (Springer, 2019).
Griffin, J. W. & Motta-Mena, N. V. in Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science (eds Shackelford, T. & Weekes-Shacklelford, V. A.) (Springer, 2020).
Griffin, J. W. Quantifying the face inversion effect in nonhuman primates: a phylogenetic meta-analysis. Anim. Cogn. 23, 237–249 (2020).
Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A. & Gobbini, M. I. The distributed human neural system for face perception. Trends Cogn. Sci. 4, 223–233 (2000).
Griffin, J. W., Bauer, R. & Scherf, K. S. A quantitative meta-analysis of face recognition deficits in autism: 40 years of research. Psychol. Bull. 147, 268–292 (2021).
Weigelt, S., Koldewyn, K. & Kanwisher, N. Face identity recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral studies. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 36, 1060–1084 (2012).
Griffin, J. W. et al. Investigating the face inversion effect in autism across behavioral and neural measures of face processing: a systematic review and Bayesian meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2023.2105 (2023).
Guillon, Q., Hadjikhani, N., Baduel, S. & Roge, B. Visual social attention in autism spectrum disorder: insights from eye tracking studies. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 42, 279–297 (2014).
Chita-Tegmark, M. Social attention in ASD: a review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies. Res. Dev. Disabil. 48, 79–93 (2016).
Papagiannopoulou, E. A., Chitty, K. M., Hermens, D. F., Hickie, I. B. & Lagopoulos, J. A systematic review and meta-analysis of eye-tracking studies in children with autism spectrum disorders. Soc. Neurosci. 9, 610–632 (2014).
Frazier, T. W. et al. A meta-analysis of gaze differences to social and nonsocial information between individuals with and without autism. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 56, 546–555 (2017).
Klin, A., Shultz, S. & Jones, W. Social visual engagement in infants and toddlers with autism: early developmental transitions and a model of pathogenesis. Neurosci. Biobehav. Rev. 50, 189–203 (2015).
Wetherby, A. M. et al. Early indicators of autism spectrum disorders in the second year of life. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 34, 473–493 (2004).
Zwaigenbaum, L. et al. Clinical assessment and management of toddlers with suspected autism spectrum disorder: insights from studies of high-risk infants. Pediatrics 123, 1383–1391 (2009).
Chawarska, K., Macari, S. & Shic, F. Decreased spontaneous attention to social scenes in 6-month-old infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders. Biol. Psychiatry 74, 195–203 (2013).
Nakano, T. et al. Atypical gaze patterns in children and adults with autism spectrum disorders dissociated from developmental changes in gaze behaviour. Proc. Biol. Sci. 277, 2935–2943 (2010).
Shic, F., Bradshaw, J., Klin, A., Scassellati, B. & Chawarska, K. Limited activity monitoring in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder. Brain Res. 1380, 246–254 (2011).
Bird, G., Press, C. & Richardson, D. C. The role of alexithymia in reduced eye-fixation in autism spectrum conditions. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 41, 1556–1564 (2011).
Klin, A., Jones, W., Schultz, R., Volkmar, F. & Cohen, D. Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 59, 809–816 (2002).
Riby, D. M. & Hancock, P. J. Viewing it differently: social scene perception in Williams syndrome and autism. Neuropsychologia. 46, 2855–2860 (2008).
Golarai, G. et al. Differential development of high-level visual cortex correlates with category-specific recognition memory. Nat. Neurosci. 10, 512–522 (2007).
Scherf, K. S., Behrmann, M., Humphreys, K. & Luna, B. Visual category-selectivity for faces, places and objects emerges along different developmental trajectories. Dev. Sci. 10, F15–F30 (2007).
Nation, K. & Penny, S. Sensitivity to eye gaze in autism: is it normal? Is it automatic? Is it social? Dev. Psychopathol. 20, 79–97 (2008).
Uljarevic, M. & Hamilton, A. Recognition of emotions in autism: a formal meta-analysis. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 43, 1517–1526 (2013).
Best, C. A., Minshew, N. J. & Strauss, M. S. Gender discrimination of eyes and mouths by individuals with autism. Autism Res. 3, 88–93 (2010).
Gauthier, I., Curran, T., Curby, K. M. & Collins, D. Perceptual interference supports a non-modular account of face processing. Nat. Neurosci. 6, 428–432 (2003).
Behrmann, M., Thomas, C. & Humphreys, K. Seeing it differently: visual processing in autism. Trends Cogn. Sci. 10, 258–264 (2006).
Happe, F. & Frith, U. The weak coherence account: detail-focused cognitive style in autism spectrum disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 36, 5–25 (2006).
McPartland, J. C. et al. Atypical neural specialization for social percepts in autism spectrum disorder. Soc. Neurosci. 6, 436–451 (2011).
Bookheimer, S. Y., Wang, A. T., Scott, A., Sigman, M. & Dapretto, M. Frontal contributions to face processing differences in autism: evidence from fMRI of inverted face processing. J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc. 14, 922–932 (2008).
Harms, M. B., Martin, A. & Wallace, G. L. Facial emotion recognition in autism spectrum disorders: a review of behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Neuropsychol. Rev. 20, 290–322 (2010).
Bentin, S., Allison, T., Puce, A., Perez, E. & McCarthy, G. Electrophysiological studies of face perception in humans. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 8, 551–565 (1996).
Rossion, B., Joyce, C. A., Cottrell, G. W. & Tarr, M. J. Early lateralization and orientation tuning for face, word, and object processing in the visual cortex. NeuroImage 20, 1609–1624 (2003).
Itier, R. J. & Taylor, M. J. Inversion and contrast polarity reversal affect both encoding and recognition processes of unfamiliar faces: a repetition study using ERPs. NeuroImage 15, 353–372 (2002).
Shibata, T. et al. Generators of visual evoked potentials for faces and eyes in the human brain as determined by dipole localization. Brain Topogr. 15, 51–63 (2002).
Itier, R. J. & Taylor, M. J. Source analysis of the N170 to faces and objects. NeuroReport 15, 1261–1265 (2004).
Schweinberger, S. R., Pickering, E. C., Jentzsch, I., Burton, A. M. & Kaufmann, J. M. Event-related brain potential evidence for a response of inferior temporal cortex to familiar face repetitions. Cogn. Brain Res. 14, 398–409 (2002).
Tye, C. et al. Neurophysiological responses to faces and gaze direction differentiate children with ASD, ADHD and ASD + ADHD. Dev. Cogn. Neurosci. 5, 71–85 (2013).
Webb, S. J. et al. ERP responses differentiate inverted but not upright face processing in adults with ASD. Soc. Cogn. Affect. Neurosci. 7, 578–587 (2012).
O’Connor, K., Hamm, J. P. & Kirk, I. J. The neurophysiological correlates of face processing in adults and children with Asperger’s syndrome. Brain Cogn. 59, 82–95 (2005).
Khorrami, A., Tehrani-Doost, M. & Esteky, H. Comparison between face and object processing in youths with autism spectrum disorder: an event related potentials study. Iran. J. Psychiatry 8, 179–187 (2013).
Webb, S. J., Dawson, G., Bernier, R. & Panagiotides, H. ERP evidence of atypical face processing in young children with autism. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 36, 881–890 (2006).
Hileman, C. M., Henderson, H., Mundy, P., Newell, L. & Jaime, M. Developmental and individual differences on the P1 and N170 ERP components in children with and without autism. Dev. Neuropsychol. 36, 214–236 (2011).
Webb, S. J. et al. Identifying age based maturation in the ERP response to faces in children with autism: implications for developing biomarkers for use in clinical trials. Front. Psychiatry 13, 841236 (2022).
Dawson, G., Webb, S. J., Carver, L., Panagiotides, H. & McPartland, J. Young children with autism show atypical brain responses to fearful versus neutral facial expressions of emotion. Dev. Sci. 7, 340–359 (2004).
Kanwisher, N., McDermott, J. & Chun, M. M. The fusiform face area: a module in human extrastriate cortex specialized for face perception. J. Neurosci. 17, 4302–4311 (1997).
Haxby, J. V. et al. Distributed and overlapping representations of faces and objects in ventral temporal cortex. Science 293, 2425–2430 (2001).
Haxby, J. V., Hoffman, E. A. & Gobbini, M. Human neural systems for face recognition and social communication. Biol. Psychiatry 51, 59–67 (2002).
Adolphs, R. The social brain: neural basis of social knowledge. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 60, 693–716 (2009).
Grossmann, T. & Johnson, M. H. The development of the social brain in human infancy. Eur. J. Neurosci. 25, 909–919 (2007).
Pyles, J. A., Verstynen, T. D., Schneider, W. & Tarr, M. J. Explicating the face perception network with white matter connectivity. PLoS ONE 8, e61611 (2013).
Wang, Y. et al. Multimodal mapping of the face connectome. Nat. Hum. Behav. 4, 397–411 (2020).
Rosenthal, G., Sporns, O. & Avidan, G. Stimulus dependent dynamic reorganization of the human face processing network. Cereb. Cortex 27, 4823–4834 (2017).
Lynn, A. C. et al. Functional connectivity differences in autism during face and car recognition: underconnectivity and atypical age-related changes. Dev. Sci. 21, e12508 (2018).
Grootswagers, T., Wardle, S. G. & Carlson, T. A. Decoding dynamic brain patterns from evoked responses: a tutorial on multivariate pattern analysis applied to time series neuroimaging data. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 29, 677–697 (2017).
Peelen, M. V. & Downing, P. E. Testing cognitive theories with multivariate pattern analysis of neuroimaging data. Nat. Hum. Behav. 7, 1430–1441 (2023).
Treisman, A. The binding problem. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 6, 171–178 (1996).
Hummel, J. E. & Biederman, I. Dynamic binding in a neural network for shape recognition. Psychol. Rev. 99, 480–517 (1992).
Wang, Y. et al. Dynamic neural architecture for social knowledge retrieval. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, E3305–E3314 (2017).
Kriegeskorte, N., Mur, M. & Bandettini, P. Representational similarity analysis—connecting the branches of systems neuroscience. Front. Syst. Neurosci. 2, 4 (2008).
King, J.-R. & Dehaene, S. Characterizing the dynamics of mental representations: the temporal generalization method. Trends Cogn. Sci. 18, 203–210 (2014).
Gauthier, I. & Nelson, C. A. The development of face expertise. Curr. Opin. Neurobiol. 11, 219–224 (2001).
Schultz, R. T. et al. Abnormal ventral temporal cortical activity during face discrimination among individuals with autism and Asperger syndrome. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 57, 331–340 (2000).
Dalton, K. M. et al. Gaze fixation and the neural circuitry of face processing in autism. Nat. Neurosci. 8, 519–526 (2005).
Kleinhans, N. M. et al. Abnormal functional connectivity in autism spectrum disorders during face processing. Brain 131, 1000–1012 (2008).
Hadjikhani, N., Joseph, R. M., Snyder, J. & Tager-Flusberg, H. Abnormal activation of the social brain during face perception in autism. Hum. Brain Mapp. 28, 441–449 (2007).
Griffin, J. W., Webb, S. J., Keehn, B., Dawson, G. & McPartland, J. C. Autistic individuals do not alter visual processing strategy during encoding versus recognition of faces: a hidden Markov modeling approach. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 56, 426–435 (2026).
Del Bianco, T. et al. Temporal profiles of social attention are different across development in autistic and neurotypical people. Biol. Psychiatry Cogn. Neurosci. Neuroimaging 6, 813–824 (2021).
Carlson, T. A., Hogendoorn, H., Kanai, R., Mesik, J. & Turret, J. High temporal resolution decoding of object position and category. J. Vis. 11, 9 (2011).
Shic, F. et al. The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials: evaluation of a battery of candidate eye-tracking biomarkers for use in autism clinical trials. Mol. Autism 13, 15 (2022).
Tsao, D. Y. & Livingstone, M. S. Mechanisms of face perception. Annu. Rev. Neurosci. 31, 411–437 (2008).
Robinson, A. K., Quek, G. L. & Carlson, T. A. Visual representations: insights from neural decoding. Annu. Rev. Vis. Sci. 9, 313–335 (2023).
Nemrodov, D., Niemeier, M., Mok, J. N. Y. & Nestor, A. The time course of individual face recognition: a pattern analysis of ERP signals. NeuroImage 132, 469–476 (2016).
Farah, M. J., Tanaka, J. W. & Drain, H. M. What causes the face inversion effect? J. Exp. Psychol. Hum. Percept. Perform. 21, 628–634 (1995).
Yovel, G. & Kanwisher, N. The neural basis of the behavioral face-inversion effect. Curr. Biol. 15, 2256–2262 (2005).
Yin, R. K. Looking at upside-down faces. J. Exp. Psychol. 81, 141 (1969).
Griffin, J. W. et al. Spatiotemporal eye movement dynamics reveal altered face prioritization in early visual processing among autistic children. Biol. Psychiatry Cogn. Neurosci. Neuroimaging 10, 45–57 (2025).
Crookes, K. & McKone, E. Early maturity of face recognition: no childhood development of holistic processing, novel face encoding, or face-space. Cognition 111, 219–247 (2009).
Fuhrmann, D. et al. Perception and recognition of faces in adolescence. Sci. Rep. 6, 33497 (2016).
Parker, T. C. et al. The N170 event-related potential reflects delayed neural response to faces when visual attention is directed to the eyes in youths with ASD. Autism Res. 14, 1347–1356 (2021).
Webb, S. J. et al. The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials: initial evaluation of a battery of candidate EEG biomarkers. Am. J. Psychiatry 180, 41–49 (2023).
Faja, S. et al. Evaluation of clinical assessments of social abilities for use in autism clinical trials by the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials. Autism Res. 16, 981–996 (2023).
McPartland, J. C. et al. The Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials (ABC-CT): scientific context, study design, and progress toward biomarker qualification. Front. Integr. Neurosci. 14, 16 (2020).
Lord, C. et al. Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second Edition (Western Psychological Services, 2012).
Lord, C., Rutter, M. & Le Couteur, A. Autism Diagnostic Interview–Revised: a revised version of a diagnostic interview for caregivers of individuals with possible pervasive developmental disorders. J. Autism Dev. Disord. 24, 659–685 (1994).
Constantino, J. N. & Gruber, C. The Social Responsiveness Scale Manual, Second Edition (SRS-2) (Western Psychological Services, 2012).
Sparrow, S. S., Cicchetti, D. V. & Saulnier, C. A. Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales, Third Edition (Vineland-3) (Pearson, 2016).
Korkman, M., Kirk, U. & Kemp, S. NEPSY-II: Clinical and Interpretive Manual (The Psychological Corporation, 2007).
Webb, S. J. et al. Biomarker acquisition and quality control for multi-site studies: the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials. Front. Integr. Neurosci. 13, 71 (2019).
Bigdely-Shamlo, N., Mullen, T., Kothe, C., Su, K.-M. & Robbins, K. A. The PREP pipeline: standardized preprocessing for large-scale EEG analysis. Front. Neuroinform. 9, 16 (2015).
King, J.-R. et al. Single-trial decoding of auditory novelty responses facilitates the detection of residual consciousness. NeuroImage 83, 726–738 (2013).
Bae, G. Y., Leonard, C. J., Hahn, B., Gold, J. M. & Luck, S. J. Assessing the information content of ERP signals in schizophrenia using multivariate decoding methods. Neuroimage Clin. 25, 102179 (2020).
Mares, I., Ewing, L., Farran, E. K., Smith, F. W. & Smith, M. L. Developmental changes in the processing of faces as revealed by EEG decoding. NeuroImage 211, 116660 (2020).
Hout, M. C., Papesh, M. H. & Goldinger, S. D. Multidimensional scaling. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Cogn. Sci. 4, 93–103 (2013).
Ma, D. S., Correll, J. & Wittenbrink, B. The Chicago face database: a free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behav. Res. Methods 47, 1122–1135 (2015).

Leave a Reply