[A preliminary fMRI study of moral judgment task in high functioning autistic children].

Autistic patients show social cognitive disorders and hardly recognize their situations. This means it is difficult for them to obey rules or conform to customs. Humans have social intelligence thought to be related to a network connected to amygdala, the orbito-frontal cortex, and the superior temporal gyrus. It has been reported that normal participants judged morality in dilemma sentences through which the medial orbito-frontal cortex and the right lateral prefrontal cortex were activated. However, where autism is concerned, there has been no fMRI study during the moral judgment task. The study herein showed changes of autistic brain areas related to moral judgment. This study included one high-functioning autistic child, one Asperger's syndrome child, and three normal children. Pictures of social situations were painted and the children present were asked to judge whether the contents were moral or immoral. The results of fMRI demonstrated the orbito-frontal cortex was active in normal children but not active in the autistic children with regard to moral judgment. This suggested autistic people have functional disorders in this area. BA11 and BA22 were activated in the control group and these areas are thought to be related to sociality and "theory of mind". Furthermore, BA38 was activated in one control and this area is also related to "theory of mind" and emotions. Moral judgments about personal affairs activate brain areas related to emotions (bilateral medial frontal gyri, bilateral cingulated gyri and bilateral angular gyri) and moral judgments about public affairs activate brain areas related to working memory (left medial frontal gyrus and bilateral temporal cortices). Based on the results above, we think moral judgment is related to "theory of mind" and social cognition, and shares a common sense processing mechanism. Recently Greene et al. reported that the prefrontal cortex was active during moral judgment in an fMRI study of normally developed people. Their result reinforces our results.