Neural Correlates of Biological Motion Perception in Children with ASD

 描述(由申请人提供)：弗雷德里克·希克博士导师职业发展奖。这份申请将支持我作为一名科学家的发展，给我必要的工具，作为一名独立的研究人员。在过去的9年里，我一直致力于了解患有自闭症谱系障碍(ASD)的婴儿和蹒跚学步儿童的早期视觉社会认知过程。我开发了分析眼球跟踪数据的新技术和新方法，大量借鉴了我作为软件开发人员和工程师的经验。我对ASD的非典型视觉社会认知进行了几项研究，绘制了这种疾病的早期发展轨迹，并对ASD的信息处理非典型的性质提出了新的观点。我为自闭症研究领域带来了独特的工具包和视角。我目前正在建设一个实验室，专注于开发新的、面向消费者的技术，将理论上的变化机制和实验室发现转化为对ASD患者具有临床意义的工具。目前，帮助患有自闭症儿童的新技术的发展速度令人难以置信地快。无数的软件应用程序、工具和技术已经被提出，这些新开发的广度和速度是令人惊叹的。我的目标是以一种充分理解发展理论、大脑发育和行为的方法来为这些新的发展奠定基础。虽然我有研究行为的经验，但我将受益于更有针对性和协调的指导；要成为大脑发育研究的发展理论和方法方面的专家，我需要一个具体、全面的指导教育计划以及实践学习机会。将对发展认知神经科学的理解与技术发展结合起来，将在理论上更完整地描述变化的过程，并将加速开发和提炼新技术的方法。这种方法将使我成为自闭症研究领域中极其独特的研究员，使我能够利用我的天赋和能力来更多地发现自闭症非典型发育过程的基本性质，并开发新技术，以对受自闭症影响的个人产生积极的变化。为此，我试图加深和扩大我对三个领域的理解：(A)发展认知神经科学和神经成像；(B)自闭症发展精神病理学的临床/行为方面；以及(C)综合和模拟复杂数据流的统计学方法。在Keystone的一项研究经验中，我建议将我在眼睛跟踪方面的专业知识与功能近红外光谱(FNIRS)相结合，fNIRS是一种适用于ASD患者从婴儿期到成年期的神经成像技术，其目标是与现场标准神经成像技术功能磁共振成像(FMRI)相同的潜在动态过程。在我的提案中，我将研究幼儿和患有自闭症(N=30)的儿童的情绪生物运动处理的神经相关性，并将其与典型的发育中(TD；N=30)和发育迟缓(DD；N=20)幼儿和儿童进行比较。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mentored Career Development Award for Frederick Shic, Ph.D. This application will support my development as a scientist, giving me the tools necessary to advance as an independent investigator. For the last 9 years, I have been invested in understanding the early visual social-cognitive processes of infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). I have developed new technologies and new approaches for analyzing eye-tracking data, drawing heavily on my experiences as a software developer and engineer. I have conducted several studies of atypical visual social cognition in ASD, charting early developmental trajectories of the disorder and offering new perspectives on the nature of information processing atypicalities in ASD. I bring a unique toolset and perspective to the field of autism research. I am currently building a lab centered on developing new, consumer- ready technologies that translate theoretical mechanisms of change and laboratory findings into clinically- meaningful tools for individuals with ASD. At the moment, the development of new technologies for helping children with ASD is progressing incredibly rapidly. Countless software applications, tools, and techniques have been proposed, and the breadth and pace of these new developments is breathtaking. My goal is to ground these new developments in an approach that leverages a rich understanding of developmental theory, brain development, and behavior. Although I have experience studying behavior, I will benefit from more directed and concerted instruction; to become an expert in developmental theory and methods for the study of brain development, I will need a specific, comprehensive program of guided education as well as hands-on learning opportunities. Combining an understanding of developmental cognitive neuroscience with technology development will result in a more theoretically complete picture of the processes of change and will accelerate methods for developing and refining new technologies. This approach will make me an extremely unique investigator in the field of autism research, allowing me to use my talents and abilities to discover more about the fundamental nature of atypical developmental processes in ASD and to develop new technologies to effect positive change in individuals affected by the disorder. To this end, I am seeking to deepen and broaden my understanding of 3 fields: (a) developmental cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging; (b) clinical/behavioral aspects of the developmental psychopathology of autism; and (c) statistical methods for combining and modeling complex data streams. In a keystone research experience, I propose to combine my expertise in eye tracking with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a neuroimaging technique applicable to individuals with ASD from infancy to adulthood and which targets the same underlying dynamic processes as the standard-of-field neuroimaging technique, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). In my proposal, I will examine neural correlates of emotional biological motion processing in toddlers and children with ASD (N = 30) as compared to typically developing (TD; N = 30) and developmentally delayed (DD; N = 20) toddlers and children.