Determinants of Social Communication Skills in Autism

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目旨在发现自闭症社会沟通缺陷的生物学基础和环境影响。 前两个项目提出了实验性干预和纵向随访，以测试在何种程度上联合注意，象征性的发挥，和语言可以修改。 基于结果表明，特定的照顾者的行为，导致增益的语言技能超过15年的发展期，项目I将测试一种实验方法来修改照顾者的行为和测量的后果。 项目II将跟踪一组通过干预改善非语言交流和游戏技能的儿童，并将尝试将干预从熟练的临床医生推广到具有新样本的儿童的准专业人员。 为了了解与自闭症相关的缺陷的基础，项目III旨在通过评估已知重复的先证者的表型后遗症来阐明染色体15 q重复在自闭症中所起的作用。 该项目还计划通过详细检查具有不寻常断点或印记错误的先证者的重排来定义自闭症关键区域。 最后，隐重复的程度在特发性自闭症的人口将调查与新开发的映射技术。 项目四的重点是自闭症社会沟通缺陷的神经解剖学基础。 该项目将使用功能磁共振成像来研究信息处理的基本方面：模仿，联合注意力和参考。 这些研究将检验这样的假设，即特定神经群体（如镜像神经元）的反应特性的缺陷和大脑奖励系统的缺陷是参照和联合注意力感知障碍的基础，这导致了自闭症的社会沟通缺陷。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This program project aims to discover the biological bases of and environmental influences on the social communication deficits in autism. The first two projects propose experimental interventions and longitudinal follow-ups to test the extent to which joint attention, symbolic play, and language can be modified. Based on results showing that particular caregiver behaviors lead to gains in language skills over a 15-year period of development, Project I will test an experimental approach to modifying caregiver behaviors and measuring the consequences. Project II will follow a group of children whose nonverbal communication and play skills were improved through intervention, and will also attempt to generalize the intervention from skilled clinicians to paraprofessionals with a new sample of children. In order to understand the basis for the deficits associated with autism, Project III aims to explicate the role that duplication of chromosome 15q plays in autism by assessing the phenotypic sequelae in probands with known duplications. The proposed project also plans to define the autism critical region by detailed examination of rearrangements in probands with unusual breakpoints or imprinting errors. Lastly, the extent of cryptic duplication in the population of idiopathic autism will be investigated with newly developed mapping techniques. Project IV focuses on the neuroanatomical bases of social communication deficits in autism. The proposed project will use fMRI to investigate fundamental aspects of information processing: imitation, joint attention, and referencing. These studies will test the hypothesis that deficits in the response properties of specific neural populations, such as mirror neurons, and deficits in the brain's reward systems underlie impairments in perception of referencing and joint attention, which give rise to the social communication deficits in autism.