自闭症谱系障碍个体的共情及其理论与神经机制

Empathy in individuals with autism spectrum disorder:Symptoms,theories and neural mechanisms

自闭症谱系障碍(autism spectrum disorders,ASD)个体的社会性功能存在严重缺陷。研究者曾认为共情能力的损害是ASD的核心因素,但实证研究发现ASD个体倾向于在任务复杂或内隐的实验条件下共情受损,而在任务简单或外显的条件下则倾向于共情完整。这可能与他们难以自发、主动地注意并加工社会信息有关。心灵盲假设、极端男性脑理论、共情失衡假设、SOME模型等理论假设,以及碎镜理论、社会脑理论等神经机制对ASD个体的共情特点进行了解释和分析。最后就该领域存在的问题进行了反思与展望。

Autism spectrum disorder（ASD）, as a neural-developmental disorder, has been suggested to be associated with empathic deficits, and several studies have even proposed that lack of empathy was a hallmark in individuals with ASD. Nevertheless, behavioral studies are only slightly more likely to observe empathic deficits to identify basic and complex emotions in individuals with ASD, comparing with normal individuals. Increasing agreement has been made on the specific difficulties for the individuals with ASD to integrate information, for instance when vocal, facial, bodily and situational cues are presented simultaneously. Moreover, previous findings showed more severe impairments in implicit than explicit processing of empathic responses in individuals with ASD. Numerous theories, e.g., Mind-Blindness Hypothesis, Extreme-Male-Brain Theory, Empathy Imbalance Hypothesis, and The self to other model of empathy, as well as neuromechanisms include Broken-Mirror Theory and Social Brain Theory, have been proposed to explain the cognitive mechanisms underlying impairments of empathy in individuals with ASD. Although these theories delineate cognitive neural model of empathy that could be used to explain deficits in individuals of ASD, future studies should adopt more rigorous experiment paradigms to verify the validity of these theoretical models.