Syncing Minds Beyond the Face

Theoretical framework: Autistic individuals may show differences in recognizing and communicating emotions, which impacts navigation of the social environment, education, employment, wellbeing—leading to demands for better assessment, pragmatic person-centered therapy solutions, and especially understanding of the neural/cognitive bases. However, currently even basic questions such as the extent, nature, and direction of atypical understanding and communication of emotion and how this might be targeted are not clear. This is especially due to two research needs: (1) a necessary exploration of multiple forms of emotion communication beyond face-based stimuli, which constitute most existing studies but may confound findings due to tangential issues with eye contact or social anxiety; (2) a focus on inter-personal processes and sender-receiver interactions to consider synchrony between bodies/brains, which may unlock and actualize real-world implications of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) research.
Methods/Approach: We uniquely address these challenges by building on visual art-based paradigms developed by our team, which provide a method for communicating emotions without faces or bodies, and by coupling these with methods for simultaneously assessing activations in multiple participants’ brains using fNIRS Hyperscanning. Participants will express and identify emotions through abstract drawings, which will be compared to traditional language and face-based communication paradigms.
Objectives/Research Questions: We will: explore difference/similarity in emotion communication between autistic and non-autistic adults; investigate neural signatures in affective and cognitive emotion communication regions both intra- and inter-senders’/receivers’ brains; match brain/behavior to body synchrony via electrodermal activity and facial electromyography; start the ground-work for clinical art-based
interventions, screening/evaluation, and fostering arts-centered outreach between stakeholder communities.
Originality/Innovation: This project is a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary combination of neuroscience, clinical psychology, and empirical aesthetics to uniquely explore mechanism of emotion understanding and communication in autistic adults, providing clinical insights for art-based Hyperscanning for intervention, screening, and evaluation, addressing Austrian Strategy for Research, Technology and Innovation goals for personalized, socially-focused health research, and will further establish Austria as a key Hub for cuttingedge translational international research on the intersection of the visual arts and health.
Researchers: Pelowski (PI), expert in visual art production, fNIRS, and use of arts in neurodivergent applications. Kim, early career researcher with already established track record in interventions for and visual processing in ASD. Silani, expert in ASD/empathy; joined by leading collaborators and experts in ASD and arts research.