Behavioral, fMRI, and Anatomical MRI Investigations of Attention in Autism

描述(由申请人提供)：自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的核心诊断标准是社交和交流方面的缺陷。然而，自闭症的另一个方面是它对基本认知的影响：患有自闭症的人看、听和感觉世界的方式都不同。给自闭症患者带来困难的一个感知方面是忽视分心--当执行视觉任务时，越来越多的(但不是所有)证据表明，与典型的对照组相比，自闭症患者经历了更多无关信息的干扰，在分心的情况下变得更慢、更不准确。注意力选择的缺陷可能不仅会影响知觉，还可能进一步加剧自闭症患者在复杂的现实环境中处理日常认知任务的困难。在这项拟议的研究中，我们将利用行为心理物理学确定自闭症患者注意选择的特定阶段(S)。此外，我们将使用功能磁共振成像(FMRI)和扩散加权成像(DWI)来测试枕骨和多需求(MD)网络这两个已知支持注意力选择的大脑区域在ASD中的参与。拟议的实验将解决三个具体问题：1)ASD患者哪些注意选择功能受损，哪些幸免？2)ASD患者大脑注意网络的哪些部分出现异常反应？3)ASD患者注意区域的解剖结构是否被破坏，包括它们的白质连接？这些问题的答案将促进我们对ASD的认知和神经表型的理解，同时也有助于我们对典型个体的视觉注意及其脑基础的理解。拟议研究的更广泛的目标是在研究自闭症对象以及结构成像研究(包括形态测量和扩散加权成像)的设计、分析和解释方面培养新的专业知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The core diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are deficits in social interactions and communication. Another side to autism, though, is its impact on basic perception: people with ASD see, hear, and feel the world differently. One aspect of perception that poses difficulty for people with ASD is ignoring distractions - when performing visual tasks, increasing (but not all) evidence suggests that subjects with ASD experience more interference from irrelevant information than typical controls, becoming slower and less accurate in the face of distraction. A deficit in attentional selection might not only affect perception, but might further underlie the difficulties that individuals with ASD have in coping with everyday cognitive tasks in complex real-world environments. In the proposed research, we will pinpoint the specific stage(s) of attentional selection that are impaired in ASD using behavioral psychophysics. Further, we will test the involvement of the pulvinar and multiple-demand (MD) network, two brain regions known to support attentional selection, in ASD using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion weighted imaging (DWI). The proposed experiments will address three specific questions: 1) Which attentional selection functions are impaired in ASD, and which are spared? 2) Which parts of the brain's attentional network show abnormal responses in ASD? 3) Is the anatomy of attentional areas, including their white matter connections, disrupted in ASD? The answers to these questions will advance our understanding of the cognitive and neural phenotype of ASD, and at the same time inform our understanding of visual attention and its brain basis in typical individuals. The broader objective of the proposed studies is to cultivate new expertise in studying subjects with autism, and in the design, analysis, and interpretation of structural imaging studies (including both morphometry and diffusion- weighted imaging).