Core Center for Integrated Research on Human Communication Disorders

描述：人类沟通障碍的复杂性需要研究人员利用各种技能和技术进行协作研究。该提案寻求资金，为西北大学从事人类交流科学和障碍研究的研究人员提供基础设施支持。通过建立三个核心设施，该项目将为研究正常和障碍听力、语言处理和言语产生过程的一组研究人员提供支持。核心1将聘请人员招募难以接触的特定人群，例如自闭症儿童、幼儿和老年人，并进行常规和标准化筛查测试。核心2将开发用于人类受试者管理和数据收集的集中化和标准化工具，并将建立一个研究参与者登记册和关系数据库，以促进与受试者组和筛选资料有关的数据的安全存储和检索。最后，Core 3 将开发、部署和定制用于分析功能磁共振成像和脑电图的技术，各个实验室可以使用这些技术来开发正常和紊乱沟通背后的神经机制的连接性和图论模型。这三个核心工作的最终成果将是增加研究人员之间的合作研究，开发一个包含各种沟通障碍患者的筛查资料和实验研究结果的数据库，以及为研究人员开发先进的数学工具，使用功能磁共振成像和脑电图技术来分析与正常和沟通障碍相关的神经机制。该项目的创新成果将是建立最可靠的筛选测试和实验方案，以识别沟通障碍潜在病因的标记。

DESCRIPTION: The complexity of human communication disorders requires collaborative research between investigators utilizing a variety of skills and techniques. The proposal seeks funding to provide infrastructure support to researchers at Northwestern University who conduct research on the science and disorders of human communication. Through the establishment of three core facilities, this project will provide support to a group of investigators studying the processes involved in normal and disordered hearing, language processing, and speech production. Core 1 will hire personnel to recruit specific populations of hard-to-reach subjects such as children with autism, small children and older people and to administer routine and standardized screening tests. Core 2 will develop centralized and standardized tools for human subject management and data gathering, and will establish a research participant registry and relational database that will facilitate the secure storage and retrieval of data pertaining to subject groups and screening profiles. Finally, Core 3 will develop, deploy and customize techniques for analysis of fMRI and EEG that can be used by various labs to develop connectivity and graph theoretic models of neural mechanisms underlying normal and disordered communication. The net outcome from the work in the three cores will be an increase in collaborative research among investigators, the development of a database containing screening profiles and results of experimental studies of individuals with a variety of communication disorders, and the development of advanced mathematical tools for investigators using fMRI and EEG techniques for the analysis of neural mechanisms related to normal and disordered communication. The innovative outcome of this project will be the establishment of screening tests and experimental protocols that are most reliable for identifying markers of underlying etiologies of disorders of communication.