Experiment setup.

<p>Experiment setup.</p

Significant difference by trial type (win/miss) at each electrode for sexual rewards (anticipation/receipt)

<p>Significant difference by trial type (win/miss) at each electrode for sexual rewards (anticipation/receipt)</p

Difference by stimulation type (cTBS/iTBS) at each electrode for anticipation of sex reward.

<p>Difference by stimulation type (cTBS/iTBS) at each electrode for anticipation of sex reward.</p

Prediction of orgasm count over the coming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday by EEG alpha in anticipation of sex reward (both brain stimulation conditions included).

<p>The plot reflects the ordinal assumptions of conditional logit models (CLM). CLM do not require interval spacing, only that each “level of orgasm” be ordered For example, no value of 5 exists because no one reported 5 orgasms, and each logit is calculated only relative to the next value in the ordered list of orgasm counts.</p

Sample characteristics.

<p>Sample characteristics.</p

Pupil response to social-emotional material is associated with rumination and depressive symptoms in adults with autism spectrum disorder

<div><p>Background</p><p>Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is marked by repetitive thinking and high rates of depression. Understanding the extent to which repetitive negative thinking in ASD reflects autistic stereotypy versus general depressive thinking patterns (e.g., rumination) could help guide treatment research to improve emotional health in ASD. We compared associations between rumination, depressive symptoms, and pupil response to social-emotional material in adults with ASD and typically developing (TD) adults with and without depression.</p><p>Methods</p><p>N = 53 verbally fluent young adults were recruited to three cohorts: ASD, n = 21; TD-depressed, n = 13; never-depressed TD-controls, n = 19. Participants completed Ruminative Response Scale and Beck Depression Inventory self-reports and a passive-viewing task employing emotionally-expressive faces, during which pupillary motility was assessed to quantify cognitive-affective load. Main and interactive effects of cohort, emotion condition, and time on pupil amplitude were tested via a linear mixed effects analysis of variance using restricted maximum likelihood estimation. Similar procedures were used to test for effects of rumination and depressive symptoms on pupil amplitude over time within ASD.</p><p>Results</p><p>Responsive pupil dilation in the ASD cohort tended to be significantly lower than TD-depressed initially but increased to comparable levels by trial end. When viewing sad faces, individuals with ASD who had higher depression scores resembled TD-depressed participants’ faster, larger, and sustained pupil response. Within ASD, depressive symptoms uniquely predicted early pupil response to sad faces, while rumination and depression scores each independently predicted sustained pupil response.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>People with elevated depressive symptoms appear to have faster and greater increases in pupil-indexed neural activation following sad stimuli, regardless of ASD status, suggesting the utility of conceptualizing rumination as depression-like in treatment. Ruminative processes may increase more slowly in ASD, suggesting the potential utility of interventions that decrease reactions before they are uncontrollable. Findings also reinforce the importance of testing for effects of internalizing variables in broader ASD research.</p></div

Pupil Response by Cohort for All Emotions.

<p>The x-axis represents the 8 second viewing of the scrambled mask (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0200340#pone.0200340.g001" target="_blank">Fig 1</a>) following emotional face stimuli presentation. ASD = adults with autism spectrum disorder; TD-depressed = typically developing adults with current depressive disorders; TD-controls = typically developing comparison adults with no history of depression or anxiety. Because the functions appeared smooth, we generated plots using cubic splines with two knots. Significant differences tested at seconds 1 through 8 at Bonferroni-adjusted α = .05/8 = 0.00625 were: TD-controlsTable 2 for details).</p

Pupil response to social-emotional material is associated with rumination and depressive symptoms in adults with autism spectrum disorder - Fig 4

<p><b><i>Relation between pupil dilation to sad stimuli across trial duration and depressive symptoms (A) and rumination (B) within ASD</i>.</b> ASD = adults with autism spectrum disorder; BDI-II = Beck Depression Inventory, 2^nd edition; RRS = Ruminative Response Scale. Both y-axes represent individual-baseline corrected pupil magnitude in millimeters on a consistent scale (-0.1 to +0.40), with higher scores used here to operationalize greater cognitive-affective responsivity. Both x-axes depict the 8 seconds of trial duration. To interpret the BDI-II X Time and RRS X Time interactions, subgroups were formed by splitting the ASD group into BDI-II tertiles (low: BDI<3, medium: BDI≥3 and <16, high: BDI≥16) and RRS tertiles (low: RRS Total<35, medium: RRS Total ≥35 and <44, high: RRS Total≥44). Standard errors for pupil response at each second along the 8 second interval were estimated by computing least squares means for the estimated pupil curves at the mean BDI-II and RRS value for each tertile (note that LSMEANS within PROC MIXED automatically adjusts for multiple comparisons).</p

Emotional faces passive viewing task diagram.

<p>In the position of the second slide above, images were randomized across 80 trials, in which 4 expressions (Happy, Sad, Angry, Neutral) from 10 female and 10 male actors from the NimStim set [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0200340#pone.0200340.ref041" target="_blank">41</a>] were each presented one time. The same mask (third slide above) was presented on each trial and was matched on luminance and low-level visual salience components to the face stimuli.</p

Sample demographics and self-report descriptives.

<p>Sample demographics and self-report descriptives.</p