Multisensory Integration and Temporal Synchrony in Autism

描述（由申请人提供）：自闭症患者经常表现出难以将来自多个来源的信息整合到他们周围世界的连贯表征中。这种知觉缺陷在早期发展过程中可能特别有害，因为语言和交流的大部分知识都涉及到从其他人的言语和行为中整合听觉和视觉信息。典型个体的多感觉整合的一个重要方面是感知和利用时间同步线索来定位和识别多感觉对象的能力。虽然以前的工作强烈表明，时间同步检测在自闭症患者中发生了变化，但这种缺陷对多感觉整合的影响仍有待研究。 本研究通过测量时间同步检测对多感觉言语和非社会性物体的定位、识别和神经处理的贡献，探讨时间同步检测与自闭症儿童和匹配良好的对照组的多感觉整合之间的关系。定位和识别将与时间窗口的整合范例，其中涉及改变听觉和视觉显示的同步性和测试参与者是否能够利用异步显示，以增强感知。将通过测量事件相关电位（ERP）的变化来研究时间同步性的神经处理，ERP是神经活动的时间最敏感的测量方法之一，在时间同步性的微小变化期间。该项目将测试这样一个假设，即与对照组相比，自闭症患者在基本的多感觉整合任务中对时间延迟不太敏感，并且这种群体差异在言语和非社交（即，对象）刺激。本研究将进一步验证ERP任务中非典型时间同步检测的假设。ERP方法提供的时间分辨率以及ERP范式的注意力要求降低（即，错配负性），将提供最敏感的测试基本神经缺陷的时间处理自闭症。 拟议的研究将测试一般假设，即自闭症患者表现出整合视觉和听觉信息的问题，由于在处理时间线索的赤字。时间处理缺陷的性质的调查将提供线索自闭症的沟通缺陷的病因，并将表明在何种程度上时间处理和多感觉整合应该是早期干预计划的焦点。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Individuals with autism frequently show difficulty integrating information from multiple sources into coherent representations of the world around them. This perceptual deficit may be especially harmful during early development, when much of what is learned about language and communication involves integration of auditory and visual information from other humans' speech and behaviors. A crucial aspect of multisensory integration in typical individuals is the ability to perceive and utilize temporal synchrony cues to locate and identify multisensory objects. While previous work strongly suggests that temporal synchrony detection is altered in individuals with autism, the impact of such a deficit on multisensory integration remains to be studied. This Study will investigate the relationship between temporal synchrony detection and multisensory integration in children with autism and well-matched controls by measuring the contribution of temporal synchrony detection to the localization, identification, and neural processing of multisensory speech and non-social objects. Localization and identification will be measured with a time-window-of-integration paradigm, which involves altering the synchrony of auditory and visual displays and testing whether participants are able to utilize the asynchronous display to enhance perception. Neural processing of temporal synchrony will be investigated by measuring changes in event related potentials (ERP), one of the most temporally sensitive measures of neural activity, during small changes in asynchrony. This project will test the hypothesis that individuals with autism are less sensitive to temporal asynchrony in basic multisensory integration tasks compared to controls, and that this group difference will be evident with both speech and nonsocial (i.e., object) stimuli. This project will further test this hypothesis of atypical temporal synchrony detection during an ERP task. The temporal resolution afforded by ERP methods as well as the decreased attentional requirements of the ERP paradigm (i.e.. Mismatch Negativity), will provide the most sensitive test of basic neural deficits in temporal processing in autism. The proposed studies will test the general hypothesis that individuals with autism show problems integrating visual and auditory information due to deficits in processing temporal cues. This investigation of the nature of temporal processing deficits will provide clues to the etiology of communication deficits in autism, and will indicate the degree to which temporal processing and multisensory integration ought to be foci of early intervention programs.