Facial Recognition and its Relation to ADHD and Other Neurodivergent Disorders

As people grow up, many of them develop an awareness of the world around them based on different stimuli. Especially with babies, there is a different response based on the type of stimuli is being shown, such as toys, television, or faces. Many studies use measurements such as electroencephalography (EEG) to measure event-related potentials that correlate to each different test and based on multiple, prior tests, the fusiform gyrus produces the component N170 which is the most associated with “structural encoding of configural information in face perception” and other components that correlate with facial recognition and attention (Conte, et al., 2020).

Especially in Dr. Maggie Guy’s team’s study of this topic Face-Sensitive Brain Responses in the First Year of Life, their in-depth study of a wide variety of infant subjects in the study of object recognition in correlation to certain toys or faces. They found out that facial recognition sends the strongest signal across all ages and this response grows with age especially when the infants are looking at their mother’s face (Conte, et al., 2020). Other factors such as facial familiarity, orientation, emotional expression, and processing can impact the different component amplitudes in the brain to fire. However, correlating with autism spectrum disorder it is said that infants are more disinterested in faces compared to neurotypical children. This behavior can be seen in the lack of eye contact and disinterested expressions (Romani, et al., 2018).

Although autism spectrum disorder is the most associated with these “attentional and social impairments,” in Dr. Maria Romani’s and their team’s article on Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, they explored the similar results in attention relating to other neurodivergent disorders. They mentioned the findings of autism with “problems in social relationship and eye contact,” bipolar disorder with the difficulty of distinguishing and identifying emotion, children diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder are usually more sensitive to the emotions of anger and happiness, while schizophrenic adolescences have a decreased activation followed by “hyperactivation in areas related to emotion regulation and attribution.”

The article mostly focuses on attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD) and the main symptom of this disorder is the lack of mental and emotional engagement. Whilst ADHD is very different from autism, there is a similarity in the difficulty of facial processing and emotional recognition, though ADHD can also be developed through the child’s environment (Romani, et al., 2018). Although the article is not an experiment, it does raise the question of the advancement and connections of different neurodivergent disorders to one another. If this idea is more explored, there may be an easier way to help diagnose and treat children based on different stimuli and reactions.

 

Romani, M., et al. (2018). Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 89, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2018.03.026

Conte, S., et al. (2020) “Face-Sensitive Brain Responses in the First Year of Life.” NeuroImage, vo. 211, Science Direct, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S1053811920300896.