Social visual pursuit with mesiofrontal-limbic lesions

描述（由申请人提供）：适当的社交技能的发展需要有能力辨别和解释来自相同面孔的社交信号，并监控他们的社交互动。这些基本技能在自闭症患者身上是不正常的，这可能解释了自闭症患者严重的社交缺陷。对自闭症青少年和成人的社会视觉追求的研究表明，他们对面部和自然的社会情境都有非典型的视觉扫描模式。与正常人不同，自闭症患者更倾向于看嘴巴而不是眼睛，他们忽略了关键的社交和交流线索，而更倾向于关注非社交线索。尽管对人类和非人类灵长类动物的研究已经开始提供一些关于调节社会认知的神经网络的关键组成部分的信息，如杏仁核和高度相互关联的颞叶中部结构以及中前额叶皮层，但在这一领域仍有许多知识有待获得。要测试的总体假设是，成年猴子中额叶边缘结构的损伤是否会导致异常的面部处理和视觉社会取向模式，比如在自闭症个体中观察到的情况。本应用程序的具体目的是比较视觉扫描模式：1)与静止图像和录像片段进行交流的灵长类动物与无生命和有生命的物体的图像和录像片段；2)在经历中额叶边缘损伤的完整和手术的成年猴子中，猴子与无生命背景干扰之间的自然社会互动的录像片段。这项创新的研究将推进我们对灵长类动物社会认知的神经生物学基础的认识，特别是对社会信号的感知和识别，因此将为自闭症的神经功能障碍过程提供重要的见解，并为开发新的治疗方法提供重要的线索。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The development of proper social skills requires the ability to discern and interpret social signals arising from conspecific faces as well as that to monitor their social interactions. These basic skills are abnormal in individual with autism and may account for the profound social deficits seen in autism. Studies of social visual pursuit in adolescents and adults with autism have shown atypical patterns of visual scanning of both faces and naturalistic social situations. Autistic individuals, as opposed to normal subjects, look preferentially at the mouth than the eye area of faces and neglect crucial social and communicative cues while focusing preferentially on non-social cues. Although human as well as non-human primate studies have begun to provide some information on the key components of the neural network mediating social cognition, such as the amygdala and highly interconnected midtemporal structures and the mesial prefrontal cortex, much knowledge remains to be acquired in this domain. The overall hypothesis to be tested is whether lesion of mesiofrontal-limbic structures in adult monkeys yield to abnormal face processing and visual social orientation patterns, such as those observed in autistic individuals. The specific aims of the present application are to compare visual scanning patterns 1) to still images and videotaped clips effaces of communicating primates versus that of inanimate and animate objects and 2) to videotaped clips of naturalistic social interactions between monkeys versus inanimate background distractions in intact versus operated adult monkeys who underwent mesiofrontal-limbic lesions. This innovative study will advance our knowledge of the neurobiological basis of primate social cognition, particularly perception and identification of social signals, and thus will provide critical insights into the neural dysfunctional processes seen in autism as well as significant clues for the development of new therapies.