Table 5.
Within-subject RSA results in TPJ using all 256 trials
| Spearman's ρ (mean ± SD) |
ppermutation | ppermutationb | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASD | HC | |||||
| Neurosynth | lTPJ | Audience | 0.023 ± 0.016*** | 0.023 ± 0.014*** | 0.967 | 0.538 |
| Moral context | 0.117 ± 0.047*** | 0.144 ± 0.050*** | 0.063 | 0.094 | ||
| Payoff for oneself | −0.004 ± 0.009 | −0.002 ± 0.006 | 0.299 | 0.358 | ||
| Payoff for association | −0.003 ± 0.006 | −0.003 ± 0.006 | 0.932 | 0.919 | ||
| rTPJ | Audience | 0.028 ± 0.022*** | 0.022 ± 0.010*** | 0.203 | 0.169 | |
| Moral context | 0.098 ± 0.040*** | 0.146 ± 0.070*** | 0.009 | 0.027 | ||
| Payoff for oneself | −0.003 ± 0.009 | −0.003 ± 0.007 | 0.854 | 0.387 | ||
| Payoff for association | −0.003 ± 0.009 | −0.005 ± 0.008 | 0.386 | 0.667 | ||
| Meta-analysisa | lTPJ | Audience | 0.018 ± 0.015*** | 0.021 ± 0.016*** | 0.579 | 0.850 |
| Moral context | 0.097 ± 0.058*** | 0.096 ± 0.058*** | 0.972 | 0.914 | ||
| Payoff for oneself | −0.001 ± 0.008 | −0.00004 ± 0.008 | 0.721 | 0.745 | ||
| Payoff for association | −0.003 ± 0.005 | −0.004 ± 0.007 | 0.775 | 0.871 | ||
| rTPJ | Audience | 0.021 ± 0.019*** | 0.018 ± 0.013*** | 0.613 | 0.451 | |
| Moral context | 0.067 ± 0.034*** | 0.111 ± 0.064*** | 0.006 | < 0.001 | ||
| Payoff for oneself | −0.001 ± 0.008 | −0.001 ± 0.008 | 0.990 | 0.528 | ||
| Payoff for association | −0.002 ± 0.006 | −0.003 ± 0.006 | 0.796 | 0.689 | ||
l, left; r, right. Post hoc 2 (group) × 4 (cognitive RDM) mixed ANOVA on the Fisher r-to-z transformed Spearman's ρ revealed a strong interaction between group and cognitive RDM only in rTPJ regardless of the way we defined the ROI (the parcellation-based ROI: F(3,126) = 6.59, p < 0.001; the coordinate-based ROI: F(3,126) = 7.37, p < 0.001), which was not true in lTPJ (the parcellation-based ROI: F(3,126) = 3.00, p = 0.033; the coordinate-based ROI: F(3,126) = 0.03, p = 0.994) after controlling for the age difference, which further confirmed that the specific between-group effect in representing information of Moral context was unique in rTPJ.
aThese masks were spheres with a radius of 10 mm centering on the MNI coordinates based on a recent meta-analysis involving the mentalizing process (peak MNI coordinates: left TPJ/pSTS: −53/−59/20; right TPJ/pSTS: 56/−56/18).
bWe added the standardized age as the covariates to the regression, using the lmPerm package.
***These effects are significantly higher than 0 (i.e., one-sample t test with 5000 permutations; ppermutation < 0.001).