Towards an Endophenotype for Amygdala Dysfunction

描述（由申请人提供）：我们实验室的研究以及过去十年的其他研究已经证实了杏仁核在社会感知中的重要参与，例如处理面孔，并产生了关于其在精神疾病中的作用的假设，例如自闭症。然而，杏仁核在调节社会功能障碍的内在表型中可能发挥的确切作用仍然知之甚少。这一修订后的申请计划在三个具体目标中对这一主题进行系统和深入的调查。目标1将研究在真实的社交互动中（通过实时视频和面对面互动）的眼球运动和情绪反应。这将量化杏仁核对现实社会互动的贡献，以及自闭症引起的损伤。目标2将更详细地研究包含面孔的社交场景的处理，并将对面孔的厌恶和缺乏吸引力区分开来。目标3将使用“气泡”方法来研究面部的哪些特征在行为，情感和神经水平上驱动歧视。这些实验将辅以详细的问卷调查和访谈，以评估现实生活中的社会功能，并探讨个体差异。这些目标将在杏仁核局灶性病变的神经学受试者、自闭症高功能受试者、具有广泛自闭症表型的自闭症儿童的父母以及神经典型对照者中进行。这些群体之间的对比将检验杏仁核功能障碍导致自闭症患者以及自闭症患者一级亲属的社会障碍的总体假设。杏仁核功能受损的内在表型可能导致几种精神疾病，其中杏仁核被认为是功能障碍，包括抑郁症，焦虑症，精神分裂症和自闭症。它也可能导致健康人群中易患这些精神疾病的维度的个体差异，特别是在那些与这些疾病有大量遗传差异的人（如一级亲属）中。我们的刺激和方法将提供给研究精神疾病的研究人员和临床医生，并将为诊断提供信息，并为设计未来的干预措施提供基础。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Studies from our laboratory as well as others over the past decade have confirmed the important participation of the amygdala in social perception, such as processing faces, and generated hypotheses about its role in mental illness, such as autism. Yet the precise role that the amygdala might play in mediating an endophenotype for social dysfunction remains poorly understood. This revised application plans a systematic and in-depth investigation of this topic in three specific aims. Aim 1 will investigate eye movements and emotional response during real social interactions (over live video and during face-to-face interactions). This will quantify the amygdala's contribution to realistic social interactions, and the impairments arising from autism. Aim 2 will investigate in more detail processing of social scenes containing faces, and tease apart possible aversion to faces from lack of attraction to them. Aim 3 will use the "bubbles" method to investigate which features in faces drive discrimination at the behavioral, emotional, and neural level. These experiments will be complemented by detailed questionnaires and interviews to assess real-life social functioning, and to explore individual differences. The aims will be carried out in neurological subjects with focal lesions of the amygdala, in high-functioning subjects with autism, in parents of autistic children who have the Broad Autism Phenotype, as well as in neurotypical controls. Contrasts between these groups will test the overall hypothesis that amygdala dysfunction contributes to the social impairments seen in autism as well as in first-degree relatives of people with autism. An endophenotype for impaired amygdala function is likely to contribute to several psychiatric illnesses in which the amygdala is thought to be dysfunctional, including depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia and autism. It is also likely to contribute to individual differences in the healthy population on dimensions that predispose to these psychiatric diseases, especially in those who share substantial genetic variance with these diseases (such as first-degree relatives). Our stimuli and methods will be made available to researchers and clinicians studying mental illness, and will inform diagnosis as well as provide a basis for designing future interventions.