Neural Correlates of Biological Motion Perception in Children with ASD

 描述（由申请人提供）：弗雷德里克·希克博士的辅导职业发展奖。这个应用程序将支持我作为一个科学家的发展，给我必要的工具，以推进作为一个独立的调查员。在过去的9年里，我一直致力于了解患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASD）的婴儿和幼儿的早期视觉社会认知过程。我开发了分析眼动追踪数据的新技术和新方法，这在很大程度上得益于我作为软件开发人员和工程师的经验。我已经进行了几项研究，非典型的视觉社会认知的ASD，绘制早期发展轨迹的障碍，并提供新的观点的性质，信息处理的复杂性在ASD。我为自闭症研究领域带来了独特的工具和视角。我目前正在建立一个实验室，专注于开发新的、消费者准备好的技术，将理论上的变化机制和实验室发现转化为对ASD患者有临床意义的工具。目前，帮助ASD儿童的新技术的开发进展非常迅速。无数的软件应用程序、工具和技术被提出，这些新开发的广度和速度令人惊叹。我的目标是将这些新的发展建立在一种利用对发展理论、大脑发展和行为的丰富理解的方法上。虽然我有研究行为的经验，但我将受益于更有针对性和协调一致的指导;要成为研究大脑发育的发展理论和方法的专家，我需要一个具体的，全面的指导教育计划以及动手学习的机会。将对发展认知神经科学的理解与技术发展相结合，将在理论上更完整地描述变化过程，并将加速开发和改进新技术的方法。这种方法将使我在自闭症研究领域成为一个非常独特的研究者，使我能够利用我的才能和能力来发现更多关于ASD非典型发育过程的基本性质，并开发新技术来影响受这种疾病影响的个人的积极变化。为此，我正在寻求加深和扩大我对3个领域的理解：（a）发展认知神经科学和神经影像学;（B）自闭症发展精神病理学的临床/行为方面;（c）组合和建模复杂数据流的统计方法。在一个关键的研究经验，我建议联合收割机结合我的专业知识，在眼动跟踪与功能近红外光谱（fNIRS），神经成像技术适用于个人ASD从婴儿到成年，其目标是相同的基本动态过程作为标准的现场神经成像技术，功能磁共振成像（fMRI）。在我的提议中，我将研究自闭症儿童（N = 30）与典型发育（TD; N = 30）和发育迟缓（DD; N = 20）幼儿和儿童的情绪生物运动处理的神经相关性。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mentored Career Development Award for Frederick Shic, Ph.D. This application will support my development as a scientist, giving me the tools necessary to advance as an independent investigator. For the last 9 years, I have been invested in understanding the early visual social-cognitive processes of infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). I have developed new technologies and new approaches for analyzing eye-tracking data, drawing heavily on my experiences as a software developer and engineer. I have conducted several studies of atypical visual social cognition in ASD, charting early developmental trajectories of the disorder and offering new perspectives on the nature of information processing atypicalities in ASD. I bring a unique toolset and perspective to the field of autism research. I am currently building a lab centered on developing new, consumer- ready technologies that translate theoretical mechanisms of change and laboratory findings into clinically- meaningful tools for individuals with ASD. At the moment, the development of new technologies for helping children with ASD is progressing incredibly rapidly. Countless software applications, tools, and techniques have been proposed, and the breadth and pace of these new developments is breathtaking. My goal is to ground these new developments in an approach that leverages a rich understanding of developmental theory, brain development, and behavior. Although I have experience studying behavior, I will benefit from more directed and concerted instruction; to become an expert in developmental theory and methods for the study of brain development, I will need a specific, comprehensive program of guided education as well as hands-on learning opportunities. Combining an understanding of developmental cognitive neuroscience with technology development will result in a more theoretically complete picture of the processes of change and will accelerate methods for developing and refining new technologies. This approach will make me an extremely unique investigator in the field of autism research, allowing me to use my talents and abilities to discover more about the fundamental nature of atypical developmental processes in ASD and to develop new technologies to effect positive change in individuals affected by the disorder. To this end, I am seeking to deepen and broaden my understanding of 3 fields: (a) developmental cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging; (b) clinical/behavioral aspects of the developmental psychopathology of autism; and (c) statistical methods for combining and modeling complex data streams. In a keystone research experience, I propose to combine my expertise in eye tracking with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a neuroimaging technique applicable to individuals with ASD from infancy to adulthood and which targets the same underlying dynamic processes as the standard-of-field neuroimaging technique, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In my proposal, I will examine neural correlates of emotional biological motion processing in toddlers and children with ASD (N = 30) as compared to typically developing (TD; N = 30) and developmentally delayed (DD; N = 20) toddlers and children.