A structural and functional imaging study of autism and its extended phenotype

为什么自闭症可能在一个孩子身上发展，而其他家庭成员却没有，这可能是自闭症研究中许多未解之谜中最重要的问题之一。重要的线索可能在于这样一个事实，即自闭症患者的兄弟姐妹中明显未受影响的人，往往在思维过程中表现出与自闭症患者相似的缺陷。我们建议研究40名患有自闭症的青少年（诊断为高功能自闭症或阿斯伯格综合症），40名兄弟姐妹和40名不相关的对照组。通过比较这三组，我们的目标是发现与自闭症相关的因素，以及与自闭症样损伤相关的因素（无论个体是否患有自闭症或是否是兄弟姐妹）。我们将使用大脑扫描技术（使用安全且不涉及任何形式的辐射的磁共振成像）来记录大脑的结构，并测量大脑不同部位的活动水平，同时参与者正在进行被认为是受自闭症影响的预定活动。我们的总体目标是通过分离出这些不同潜在因素的相对影响来更好地理解自闭症的原因。

The reason why autism may develop within one child and yet spare other family members is perhaps one of the most important of the many unanswered questions within autism research. Important clues may lie in the fact that apparently unaffected siblings of individuals with autism often display impairments in thought processes that resemble those seen in autism.We propose studying forty adolescents with autism (with diagnoses of high functioning autism or Asperger syndrome), forty siblings and forty unrelated controls. By comparing these three groups, we aim to discover factors that relate specifically to autism, in addition to and as distinct from factors that relate to autism-like impairments (regardless of whether the individual has autism or is a sibling).We will use brain scanning techniques (using magnetic resonance imaging that is safe and does not involve any form of radiation) to record the structure of the brain and measure levels of activity in different parts of the brain whilst the participant is performing predefined activities that are believed to be affected by autism. Our overall goal is to better understand the causes of autism by separating out the relative effects of these different potential factors.