Psychobiological investigation of the socioemotional functioning in autism

描述(申请人提供)：自闭症目前被广泛认为是一种谱系障碍，受影响的个人有不同程度的社会和情绪障碍。在本申请中，我们描述了自闭症的一个新的概念，以解释一些异质性。在应用中，提出了一个神经内分泌谱模型，在该模型中，情绪反应性、社会反应性和生物指数的各个方面相互交叉，以定义不同的亚型。这项调查涉及三项相互关联的社会情绪功能研究，利用几种分析方法，包括评估情绪唤醒和压力的生物标记物，复杂的行为观察技术，以及功能神经成像，以仔细探索患有和不患有自闭症的儿童的心理生物学特征。具体地说，在操场活动的同伴互动期间，将获得复杂的行为观察，以评估自闭症儿童表现出的频率、持续时间和互动序列。这些数据将用应激激素进行分析，以揭示行为症状和生物症状之间的关系。此外，我们将探索这些儿童在与不同的电脑和人类伙伴玩游戏时的大脑激活模式。预计这项关于“真实世界”社交互动的全面研究将使我们能够发现儿童在与同伴玩耍之前、期间和之后的行为、生物特征和大脑活动之间的有意义的联系。最终目标是，这些结果将更好地了解我们对自闭症的理解，从而允许我们提供个性化的生物和行为治疗。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Autism is currently widely viewed as a spectrum disorder with affected individuals having varying degrees of social and emotional disturbances. In the present application we describe a new conceptualization of autism in order to account for some of the heterogeneity. In the application, a neuroendocrine spectrum model is proposed in which aspects of emotional reactivity, social responsiveness and biological indices intersect to define distinct subtypes. The investigation involves three interrelated studies of socioemotional functioning utilizing several methods of analysis to include the assessment of biological markers of emotional arousal and stress, sophisticated behavioral observational techniques, and functional neuroimaging in order to carefully explore the psychobiological profiles of children with and without autism. Specifically, during peer interactions of a playground activity, sophisticated behavioral observation will be obtained to evaluate the frequency, duration and interactive sequences exhibited by children with autism. These data will be analyzed with stress hormones to uncover relationships between behavioral and biological symptom profiles. In addition, we will explore brain activation patterns in these children while they play games with different computer and human partners. It is anticipated that this comprehensive study of "real world" social interactions will allow us to uncover meaningful associations between the child's behavior, biological profiles and brain activity before, during and after play with peers. The ultimate goal is that these results will better inform our understanding of autism to allow us to provide individualized biological and behavioral treatments.