Bumetanide for autism: more eye contact, less amygdala activation

Amygdala activation for eye contact despite complete cortical blindness.

Cortical blindness refers to the loss of vision that occurs after destruction of the primary visual cortex. Although there is no sensory cortex and hence no conscious vision, some cortically blind patients show amygdala activation in response to facial or bodily expressions of emotion. Here we investigated whether direction of gaze could also be processed in the absence of any functional visual...

Uncovering the origins of dogehuman eye contact: dingoes establish eye contact more than wolves, but less than dogs

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2017.09.002 0003-3472/© 2017 The Association for the Study of A Through domestication, dogs have developed a robust ability to form interspecific bonds with humans. Recent work comparing dogs and wolves suggests that eye contact is an important behaviour underlying these social bonds; however, it remains unclear how this feature of interspecific social bondin...

Amygdala damage impairs eye contact during conversations with real people.

The role of the human amygdala in real social interactions remains essentially unknown, although studies in nonhuman primates and studies using photographs and video in humans have shown it to be critical for emotional processing and suggest its importance for social cognition. We show here that complete amygdala lesions result in a severe reduction in direct eye contact during conversations wi...

More or less connected in autism, compared to what?

Derived more-less relational mands in children diagnosed with autism.

In Experiment 1, more and less relations were trained for arbitrary Stimuli A1 and A2 with 3 children with autism. The following conditional discriminations were then trained: A1-B1, A2-B2, B1-C1, B2-C2. In subsequent tests, participants showed derived more-less mands (mand with C1 for more and mand with C2 for less). A training procedure reversed the B-C conditional discriminations, and partic...