Development of brain structure supporting face learning in infants at risk for autism

支持自闭症风险婴儿面部学习的大脑结构发育

• 批准号: 10573632
• 负责人: Carissa J Cascio
• 金额: $ 27.49万
• 依托单位: VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-12-01 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10573632
• 关键词: 5 year old; Adult; Affect; Age; Age Months; Algorithms; Anatomy; Anterior; Anterolateral; Autism Diagnosis; Behavior; Behavioral; Bilateral; Brain; Brain region; Calibration; Caregivers; Characteristics; Clinical; Data; Data Set; Development; Diagnosis; Diagnostic; Early Diagnosis; Early Intervention; Early identification; Equipment and supply inventories; Exhibits; Exposure to; Face; Face Processing; Foundations; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Fusiform gyrus; Growth; Handedness; Human; Impairment; Individual; Infant; Lead; Learning; Left; Life; Link; Location; Longitudinal Studies; MRI Scans; Measures; Minor; Morphology; Neurobiology; Outcome; Pervasive Development Disorder; Positioning Attribute; Property; Publishing; Resources; Risk; Sampling; Scanning; Sensory; Severities; Social Behavior; Social Functioning; Social skills development; Socialization; Specific qualifier value; Specificity; Structure; Surface; Symptoms; System; Temporal Lobe; Testing; Thick; Third Pregnancy Trimester; Toddler; Visual; Visual Pathways; Visual System; Work; association cortex; autism spectrum disorder; awake; collateral sulcus; experience; face perception; fusiform face area; high risk; high risk infant; learning ability; morphometry; myelination; neural; novel marker; predicting response; prenatal; rate of change; repetitive behavior; response; social; social cognition; social communication; social skills; timeline

Project Summary Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that is characterized by impaired social cognition, with global differences in brain structure that emerge as early as 6 months of age, years before symptoms are typically detected and can lead to a diagnosis. Among the brain regions that exhibit these early changes is the fusiform gyrus, part of the ventral visual pathway that contains the fusiform face area (FFA). The FFA is important for recognizing faces and undergoes changes in its structure in response to experience-dependent learning of faces, which is ubiquitous in the first year when infants are exposed to caregivers’ faces. This early learning of faces constitutes a foundational proto-social skill upon which social cognition builds. The FFA is defined by its functional response to faces using functional MRI (fMRI), making its study in young infants challenging as they usually cannot be scanned while awake. However, a reliable anatomical landmark, the mid-fusiform sulcus (MFS), specifies the location of FFA in over 80% of brains studied to date. The average and peak depth of cortical sulci, as well as the thickness of cortex in their banks, have been shown in other studies to predict functional properties of the cortex. Thus, we will use a rich publicly available resource, the IBIS dataset, which comprises structural MRI scans at 6, 12, and 24 months from infants at high and low risk of developing autism, to investigate the structure of the MFS and surrounding cortex. In Aim I, we will characterize its typical longitudinal development, and in Aim II, we will test for group differences in its structure and the developmental trajectory of its growth and predictive association of its structure with clinical measures of social communication and socialization. The outcome of this project will shed light on the developmental timing of early visual experience related to social skills development, and has the potential to lead to a novel biomarker reflecting early face learning ability that could provide a new target for early intervention approaches.

项目摘要 自闭症是一种以社会认知受损为特征的广泛性发育障碍， 大脑结构的差异早在6个月大的时候就出现了，比典型的症状早几年 检测到并可能导致诊断。在显示这些早期变化的大脑区域中，有一个是梭形脑区 脑回，腹侧视觉通路的一部分，包含梭形面部区域(FFA)。FFA对以下方面很重要 识别面孔并经历其结构的变化以响应对面孔的经验依赖的学习， 在婴儿接触照顾者的脸的第一年，这种情况随处可见。这种对面孔的早期学习 构成了社会认知建立在其基础上的一种基本的原社会技能。FFA由其定义 使用功能磁共振成像(FMRI)对面部的功能反应，使其在幼儿中的研究具有挑战性 通常在醒着时无法扫描。然而，一个可靠的解剖标志，中梭形沟 (MFS)，指定了到目前为止研究的超过80%的大脑中FFA的位置。的平均深度和峰值深度 皮质沟以及大脑皮质的厚度在其他研究中也被证明可以预测 大脑皮质的功能特性。因此，我们将使用丰富的公开可用资源IBIS数据集，它 包括6个月、12个月和24个月时患有自闭症高风险和低风险婴儿的结构性核磁共振扫描， 观察MFS及其周围皮质的结构。在目标一中，我们将描述其典型的纵向 发展，在目标II，我们将测试其结构的群体差异和发展轨迹 它的生长及其结构与社会交往和临床测量的预测性关联 社交。该项目的结果将阐明早期视觉体验的发展时机 与社交技能发展有关，并有可能导致一种反映早期面孔的新生物标志物 学习能力，可为早期干预方法提供新的靶点。