News Finding: The shapes, such as a large red triangle and a small blue triangle, moved in ways that could be seen as an interaction between them, such as coaxing or dancing.
Paper Finding: Additionally, there were no significant group differences in the modulation of activation while processing GD animations compared to the RD condition.
News Context: "Weaker coordination and communication among core brain areas during social thinking tasks in autism provides evidence for how different brain areas in autism struggle to work together as a team." The shapes, such as a large red triangle and a small blue triangle, moved in ways that could be seen as an interaction between them, such as coaxing or dancing. The team demonstrated that "seeing" the interactions was in the mind of the beholder, or to be more specific, in the ToM circuitry of the viewer's brain.
Paper Context: There was no region where the ASD participants showed greater activation relative to the TD participants in this contrast (i.e., there was no evidence of an ASD > TD effect, for the ToM vs. RD contrast). Additionally, there were no significant group differences in the modulation of activation while processing GD animations compared to the RD condition. Functional connectivity analysis revealed a pattern of underconnectivity in the ASD group relative to the TD group in the following way: a two-way (group: TD and ASD) × 3 (condition: ToM, GD, and RD) repeated measures ANOVA was performed to assess overall functional connectivity (by averaging z-scores across all ROIs) and revealed no main effects of group [F(1, 24) = 0.03, p = 0.8] or condition [F(2, 48) = 0.65, p = 0.53]; however, the group × condition interaction was significant [F(2, 48) = 3.43, p = 0.04].