Advancing the state-of-the-art in child development and autism with precise human movement analysis

这个跨学科的博士学位将通过精确的人类运动分析来推进儿童发展和自闭症的最新技术，以开发和部署定制的轻量级可穿戴传感器，用于非常年幼的儿童和婴儿的自闭症运动特征的生态特征。该项目将探索、开发和部署一种新的生态严肃游戏模式，采用适合幼儿的定制轻如羽毛的可穿戴设备。数据将从有自闭症风险的儿童和典型的发展中儿童中收集，并通过在马德拉进行的一项全人口出生队列研究收集，该项目团队正在与马德拉进行合作。该项目将产生新的技术创新，以解决自闭症病因学的理论空白，并满足儿童早期健康和教育的实际需要，在现有方法允许之前识别自闭症谱系障碍儿童。这些数据将使我们对运动在儿童发育中的作用及其在自闭症谱系障碍中的具体破坏有科学和专业的理解，为评估和治疗提供可能的新目标。

This interdisciplinary PhD will advance the state-of-the-art in child development and autism with precise human movement analysis to develop and deploy bespoke, lightweight wearable sensors for the ecological characterization of the autism motor signature in very young children and infants. The project will explore, develop and deploy a new, ecological serious game paradigm employing bespoke feather-weight wearables suitable for very young children. Data will be collected from children at-risk for autism, and typically developing, as well as through a whole-population birth cohort study in Madeira, with whom the project team is collaborating. The project will produce new technological innovation to address gaps in theory in the aetiology of autism, and satisfy practical need in early childhood health and education to identify children with autism spectrum disorder before current methods allow. These data will inform our scientific and professional understanding of the role of the movement in child development and its specific disruption in autism spectrum disorder, to provide a possible new target for assessment and treatment.