Cortical Activation to Faces and Objects in Infants at High-Risk for ASD

自闭症谱系障碍高危婴儿面部和物体的皮质激活

• 批准号: 8649352
• 负责人: Nicole Zieber
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA AT COLUMBIA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-09-18 至 2014-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8649352
• 关键词: Adult; Affect; Age; Age-Months; Area; Atlases; Autistic Disorder; Behavioral; Brain; Brain region; Cereals; Characteristics; Child; Classification; Clinical; Development; Diagnosis; Disease; Electroencephalography; Event-Related Potentials; Exhibits; Face; Face Processing; Failure; Family member; Genetic; Head; Human; Impairment; Individual; Infant; Lead; MRI Scans; Methods; Modeling; Neurologic; Neurophysiology - biologic function; Participant; Pattern; Phenotype; Population Study; Prevalence; Process; Public Health; Race; Relative (related person); Reporting; Research; Risk; Series; Shapes; Siblings; Source; Stimulus; Symptoms; Testing; Time; Tissues; Variant; Work; age group; autism spectrum disorder; base; critical period; density; high risk; high risk infant; infancy; interest; neural patterning; public health relevance; reconstruction; relating to nervous system; response; social

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed research will examine cortical sources of ERP components associated with face processing in infancy with a group of typically developing (TD) infants and a group of infants at high-risk for developing ASD (ASIBS). Deficits in face processing are a common impairment associated with ASD. Adults with ASD demonstrate patterns of neural response distinct from typical adults when viewing faces, as evidenced by longer N170 latencies to faces. However, relatively little is known about how early differences in brain development contribute to these differences in face processing. The proposed study will investigate potential differences between ASIBS and TD infants at a time when specialization for faces is developing, from 6 to 12 months. Two ERP components have been identified as pre-cursors to the face-sensitive adult N170, the infant N290 and P400. Evidence of face specialization can be detected from differences in the amplitude and latency of these face-sensitive components when viewing faces as opposed to objects. Additionally, these components are sensitive to inversion (which indicates specialized processing of faces) by 12 months of age in TD infants. No study has examined whether ASIBS show a face inversion effect at this age, but ERP studies with adults have shown that the N170 is not sensitive to face inversion in adults with ASD. The proposed research will identify the cortical generators of face-sensitive ERP components in infancy. Cortical source localization will be performed using head models based upon individual infants' MRIs. This method allows for more accurate classification of tissue within the head's interior, which is of particular significance when studying populations (such as infants) where there is a great deal of variability in head size and shape, even within a specific age group. Using realistic models to calculate current density within the head will allow for more accurate estimation of cortical sources of activation, which may allow for more fine-grained distinctions to be made between groups. Ultimately, this will allow us to identify brain regions active during face processing in TD infants and ASIBS, as well as document any differences emerging during this critical time period for face specialization.

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的研究将检查与一组典型发育（TD）婴儿和一组患有自闭症谱系障碍（ASIBS）高风险婴儿的婴儿期面部处理相关的 ERP 成分的皮质来源。面部处理缺陷是与 ASD 相关的常见损伤。患有自闭症谱系障碍 (ASD) 的成年人在观看面孔时表现出与典型成年人不同的神经反应模式，N170 对面孔的延迟较长就证明了这一点。然而，关于大脑发育的早期差异如何导致面部处理的这些差异，人们知之甚少。拟议的研究将调查 ASIBS 和 TD 婴儿在面部特殊化正在发展的时期（6 至 12 个月）之间的潜在差异。两个 ERP 成分已被确定为面部敏感成人 N170、婴儿 N290 和 P400 的前身。当查看面部而不是物体时，可以从这些面部敏感成分的幅度和延迟的差异中检测到面部专业化的证据。此外，TD 婴儿在 12 个月大时，这些组件对倒置（表示面部的特殊处理）很敏感。没有研究检验 ASIBS 是否在这个年龄段表现出面部倒转效应，但针对成人的 ERP 研究表明，N170 对患有 ASD 的成人的面部倒转不敏感。 拟议的研究将确定婴儿期面部敏感 ERP 组件的皮质生成器。将使用基于单个婴儿 MRI 的头部模型进行皮质源定位。这种方法可以更准确地对头部内部的组织进行分类，这在研究人群时具有特别重要的意义 （例如婴儿），即使在特定年龄组内，头部尺寸和形状也存在很大差异。使用真实模型来计算头部内的电流密度将允许更准确地估计皮质激活源，这可能允许在组之间进行更细粒度的区分。最终，这将使我们能够识别 TD 婴儿和 ASIBS 面部处理过程中活跃的大脑区域，并记录在面部专门化的关键时期出现的任何差异。