People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) find making eye contact with others in everyday situations challenging. Even though eye contact is an essential part of everyday interactions, scientists have been unable to examine the neurological bases of live social interaction involving eye contact in ASD due to the challenge of simultaneously scanning two peoples brains.

A published study in the journal PLOS ONE stated that researchers used functional near-infrared spectroscopy, a non-invasive optical neuroimaging technique, to examine brain activity during brief social interactions between pairs of individuals, each consisting of a typical participant and one with ASD. They found that the dorsal parietal region of the brain contains specific brain regions linked to the social symptomatology of autism. The study revealed that these brain reactions to live face and eye contact might serve as a biomarker for the diagnosis of ASD and a test of the effectiveness of treatments for autism.

The researchers further noticed that persons with ASD displayed considerably less dorsal parietal cortex activity during eye contact than participants without ASD. Additionally, the less activity in this area of the brain was seen, the more severe the overall social symptoms of ASD as determined by ADOS (Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd Edition) scores.

Real eye-to-eye contact caused synchronized neural activity in these regions between normal people, while looking at a video face did not. The absence of this expected increase in neural connectivity in ASD is consistent with the challenges faced in social interactions.

 (Source: https://theprint.in/health/study-reveals-why-those-with-autism-avoid-eye-contact/1208276/)