Mechanisms underlying emotion processing in the broader autistic phenotype

This thesis examined the role of early visual pathways in communicating facial emotional information, and whether this interacts in neurotypicals with varying autistic tendencies. It was found that neurotypicals with high levels of autistic traits share similar behavioural and electrophysical characteristics as individuals with clinical autism spectrum disorder. The findings provide insight into processing differences that contribute to the autism phenotype, and highlights that the weighting of inputs to cortex through the pulvinar and lateral geniculate nucleus may differ for those with low and high autistic traits.