Predicting Autism through Behavioral and Biomarkers of Attention in Infants

通过婴儿注意力的行为和生物标志物预测自闭症

• 批准号: 8391338
• 负责人: Bridgette Lynne Kelleher
• 金额: $ 3.47万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-11-15 至 2014-08-14
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8391338
• 关键词: Affect; Age; Age-Months; Area; Attention; Autistic Disorder; Behavior; Behavioral; Biological Markers; Child; Cognitive; Communities; Cross-Sectional Studies; Deceleration; Development; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Disease; Early Diagnosis; Early Intervention; Early identification; Early treatment; Employee Strikes; Eye; Eye Movements; Family; Fragile X Syndrome; Genetic Counseling; Heart; Heart Rate; Heterogeneity; Impairment; Individual; Infant; Investigation; Link; Measures; Methods; Neurocognitive; Neurosciences; Outcome; Paired Comparison; Pathway interactions; Pattern; Performance; Personal Satisfaction; Phase; Play; Population; Procedures; Process; Prospective Studies; Public Health; Publishing; Research; Resources; Response to stimulus physiology; Risk; Risk Factors; Role; Sampling; Services; Severities; Siblings; Specificity; Speed; Stimulus; Time; United States; Visual; Visual attention; Work; autism spectrum disorder; base; behavior measurement; computerized; cost; gaze; heart rate variability; high risk; high risk infant; infancy; innovation; longitudinal design; male; meetings; multilevel analysis; novel; preference; prospective; social; stimulus processing; visual tracking

Understanding the early predictors of autism is essential to promoting earlier identification, diagnosis and treatment. Although aberrant visual attention is one of the earliest identified predictors of autism and may play an integral role in the socio-communicative deficits inherent in the disorder, the emergence of atypical attention in infancy is poorly understood. The present proposal seeks to characterize the development of aberrant attention in autism by integrating cognitive and developmental neuroscience methods within a multiple-group, prospective longitudinal design. Methods will include computerized attention orienting and visual preference paradigms integrated with concurrently-measured heart-defined sustained attention. Integrating behavioral and heart-defined measures will critically inform whether behavioral eye movement reflects underlying cognitive processes of stimulus response. Patterns of behavioral and biomarkers will be compared across high risk infant siblings of children with autism (ASIBS), high risk infants with fragile X syndrome (FXS), and low risk controls; thus informing the etiological specificity of early attention indicators, which is essential to informing early diagnostic and treatment efforts. Specifically, we aim to: (1) evaluate group differences in attention orienting (disengagement, facilitation) and visual preference (social/nonsocial, novel/familiar) between 6, 9, and 12 months of age (9 and 12 months in FXS), (2) compare behavioral performance on computerized attention paradigms to heart-defined sustained attention, and (3) evaluate the relationship between autistic outcomes at 24 months and these early behavioral and biomarkers of attention. Multilevel modeling will be used to analyze the patterns of attention across high risk groups, as well as the relationship between early attention and autistic outcomes. This study is innovative in that it is the first to apply concurrently-measured behavioral and heart-defined attention to the prospective surveillance of infant attention in autism, as well as to compare behavioral and biomarkers of attention across high risk ASIBS and infants with FXS.

了解自闭症的早期预测因素对于促进早期识别、诊断和治疗至关重要。虽然异常的视觉注意力是最早确定的自闭症的预测因素之一，并且可能在自闭症固有的社会交际缺陷中起着不可或缺的作用，但对婴儿期非典型注意力的出现却知之甚少。本研究旨在通过在多组、前瞻性纵向设计中整合认知和发育神经科学方法来描述自闭症患者异常注意力的发展。方法将包括计算机化的注意定向和视觉偏好范式，以及同时测量的心脏定义的持续注意。整合行为和心脏定义的测量将重要地告知行为眼动是否反映刺激反应的潜在认知过程。将比较自闭症儿童（ASIBS）、脆性X综合征高危婴儿（FXS）和低风险对照组的高危婴儿兄弟姐妹的行为和生物标志物模式；从而了解早期注意指标的病因特异性，这对早期诊断和治疗工作至关重要。具体而言，我们的目标是：(1)评估6、9和12个月大（FXS为9和12个月）的儿童在注意定向（脱离、促进）和视觉偏好（社会/非社会、新奇/熟悉）方面的组间差异；(2)比较计算机化注意范式和心脏定义的持续注意的行为表现；(3)评估24个月大时自闭症结果与这些早期行为和注意力生物标志物之间的关系。多层次模型将用于分析高风险群体的注意力模式，以及早期注意力与自闭症结果之间的关系。这项研究的创新之处在于，它首次将同时测量的行为和心脏定义的注意力应用于自闭症婴儿注意力的前瞻性监测，并比较了高风险asbs和FXS婴儿的行为和注意力生物标志物。