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者之间利用各种技能和技术进行合作研究。该提案寻求资金，为西北大学的研究人员提供基础设施支持，这些研究人员从事人类沟通障碍的科学研究。通过建立三个核心设施，该项目将为一组研究正常和障碍听力、语言处理和语音产生过程的研究人员提供支持。核心1将雇用人员招募难以接触到的特定人群，如自闭症儿童、幼儿和老年人，并进行常规和标准化的筛查测试。核心2将为人类受试者管理和数据收集开发集中和标准化的工具，并将建立一个研究参与者注册表和关系数据库，以促进与受试者组和筛选档案有关的数据的安全存储和检索。最后，Core 3将开发、部署和定制功能磁共振成像和脑电图分析技术，这些技术可以被各种实验室用于开发正常和无序通信背后的神经机制的连接和图论模型。在这三个核心领域的工作的最终结果将是增加研究者之间的合作研究，开发一个包含筛选资料和各种沟通障碍个体实验研究结果的数据库，以及开发先进的数学工具，供研究者使用功能磁共振成像和脑电图技术分析与正常和障碍沟通相关的神经机制。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，以确定沟通障碍的潜在病因标记。

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.