DEVELOPMENT BEHAVIORAL & NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL MEASURES FOR EARLY AUTISM DIAGNOSIS

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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.