The Role of the Motor System in Speech and Language in Autism

项目摘要/摘要 自闭症是一种神经发育疾病，每44名儿童中就有一人被诊断为自闭症 沟通障碍和限制性/重复行为，包括重复的运动动作。而当 自闭症患者的社会沟通差异已被广泛研究，尤其是运动技能 那些与言语产生有关的问题仍未得到充分研究。文献中的这种差距令人惊讶，因为 运动差异是最早出现的证据之一，这是自闭症的一个有临床意义的特征。 这是许多核心症状的基础，并与接受能力和表达能力有关。几个 初步研究表明，基于运动的大脑与言语产生和运动有关。 自闭症患者的语言。这些结果表明，言语产生的运动行为可能在 在自闭症患者中观察到的沟通障碍，然而言语运动特征的大脑和行为基础 目前都有很差的特征。我们可以推进对潜在的言语产生马达的理解 通过改进自闭症患者的特征，研究自闭症患者的差异和相关功能后果 言语运动系统和言语和语言行为。在这里，我建议检验一下假设 与自闭症患者相比，在言语产生任务中，自闭症患者的言语运动脑区参与度较低 神经典型(NT)成年人，这种脱离与整体运动、言语和语言技能有关。我 将招募30名NT成年人和45名语言特征不同的自闭症成年人进行fMRI研究，该研究与Deeper 言语行为表型。在目标1中，我将使用一种新的函数定位器来识别和表征 每个单独参与者的语音生成网络，并比较不同组之间的网络。在目标2中，我 将利用这些单独的网络作为感兴趣的区域来研究语言过程中的大脑激活- 相关发音任务，非单词重复。作为目标2的一部分，我将进行深入的演讲和语言 对自闭症成年人进行表型分析，以获得其沟通技能的全面概况。这就做 然后考察了非词语重复过程中的语音产生激活与Each的关系 参与者的语音、语言和运动特征。这些目标将产生一种新的本地化方法来表征 言语产生区域，阐明NT和自闭症成人之间言语运动大脑的差异，以及 对语音产生相关的运动区和交流之间的关系提供关键见解 患有自闭症。从这个项目中获得的知识将使我们更好地理解发动机系统在 自闭症患者跨不同语言表型的交流。

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition impacting 1 in 44 children that is diagnosed based on social communication challenges and restrictive/repetitive behaviors, including repetitive motor movements. While social communication differences in autistic individuals have been widely researched, motor skills, particularly those related to speech production, remain understudied. This gap in the literature is surprising given the growing evidence that motor differences are some of the earliest to emerge, are a clinically meaningful feature of autism that underlie many core symptoms, and are correlated with both receptive and expressive language skills. A few preliminary studies indicate that there are motor-based brain differences related to speech production and language in autism. These results suggest that the motor act of speech production may play a key role in the communication challenges observed in autism, however the brain and behavioral bases of speech motor profiles are currently poorly characterized. We can advance understanding of the underlying speech production motor differences, and related functional consequences, in autistic individuals through an improved characterization of the speech motor system and speech and language behaviors. Here, I propose to test the hypothesis that speech-motor brain regions are less engaged during speech production tasks in autistic compared to neurotypical (NT) adults, and that this disengagement is related to overall motor, speech, and language skills. I will recruit 30 NT adults and 45 autistic adults with diverse language profiles for an fMRI study paired with deep speech behavioral phenotyping. In Aim 1, I will use a novel functional localizer to identify and characterize the speech production network in each individual participant and compare the networks across groups. In Aim 2, I will use these individual networks as regions of interest in which to examine brain activation during a language- relevant speech production task, nonword repetition. As part of Aim 2, I will conduct deep speech and language phenotyping of the autistic adults, in order to obtain comprehensive profiles of their communication skills. I will then examine the relationship between the speech production activation during nonword repetition and each participant’s speech, language, and motor profiles. These aims will produce a novel localizer to characterize the speech production regions, elucidate speech-motor brain differences between NT and autistic adults, and provide key insights into the relationship between speech production related motor regions and communication in autism. Knowledge gained from this project will lead to a better understanding of role of the motor system in communication in autism across diverse language phenotypes.