DEVELOPMENT BEHAVIORAL & NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES FOR EARLY AUTISM DIAGNOSIS

这个子项目是许多研究子项目中的一个 由NIH/NCRR资助的中心赠款提供的资源。子项目和 研究者（PI）可能从另一个NIH来源获得了主要资金， 因此可以在其他CRISP条目中表示。所列机构为 研究中心，而研究中心不一定是研究者所在的机构。 这项工作的目标是回答两个主要问题：第一，自闭症儿童是否在生命的早期就表现出基本社交技能的障碍？ 工作假设是，眼动追踪和ERP技术的敏感性将使我们能够精确地揭示自闭症儿童如何处理社交线索的特定模式，例如与物体相比的面部和面部表情。 第二，在非人类灵长类动物中，在婴儿早期对杏仁核和眶额皮质（这两个神经结构与社会认知有关）的损伤是否会损害基本社会技能的发展？ 工作假设是，使用与人类相同的敏感工具，我们将确定猴子这两个大脑区域早期损伤的特征的社交技能障碍的精确模式。 最后，这些问题的答案将导致开发更好的非侵入性工具来诊断自闭症儿童的亚群，增加我们对自闭症神经基础的了解，并提供一个假定的非人类灵长类动物模型，可用于测试治疗方法。 该项目下的人类受试者和动物的行为测试正在进行中。

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The goal of the proposed work is to answer two major questions: First, do children with autism show impairment in basic social skills very early in life? The working hypothesis is that the sensitivity of the eye-tracking and ERP techniques will permit us to uncover with precision specific patterns of impairment on how autistic children process social cues, such as faces and facial expressions, as compared to objects. Second, does insult to the amygdala and orbital frontal cortex (two neural structures that have been implicated in social cognition) in early infancy yield impairment in the development of basic social skills in nonhuman primates? The working hypothesis is that using the same sensitive tools as those described for humans we will determine precise patterns of social skill impairment in monkeys that characterize early damage of these two brain regions. Finally, answer to these questions will result in the development of better noninvasive tools to diagnose subgroups of autistic children, increase our knowledge of the neural substrate of autism, and provide a putative nonhuman primate model that could be used to test therapeutic treatment. The behavioral testing of the human subjects and animals under this project is in progress.