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

运动系统在自闭症言语和语言中的作用

• 批准号: 10748131
• 负责人: Amanda O'Brien
• 金额: $ 3.56万
• 依托单位: HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10748131
• 关键词: Academia; Address; Adult; Age; American Psychiatric Association; Articulation; Behavior; Behavioral; Brain; Brain region; Child; Clinical; Communication; Development; Diagnosis; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Heterogeneity; Individual; Knowledge; Language; Literature; Measures; Mentors; Motor; Motor Skills; Movement; Oral; Participant; Persons; Phenotype; Play; Population; Prevalence; Process; Production; Research; Role; Scanning; Speech; Symptoms; System; Testing; Training; Validation; Variant; Vocabulary; Work; Writing; adult with autism spectrum disorder; autism spectrum disorder; autistic; autistic children; base; behavioral phenotyping; behavioral study; brain based; career; design; improved; individuals with autism spectrum disorder; insight; interest; neuroimaging; novel; recruit; repetitive behavior; skills; social communication; social skills; syntax

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.

项目概要/摘要 自闭症是一种神经发育疾病，影响每 44 名儿童中就有 1 名，诊断依据是社交能力 沟通挑战和限制性/重复性行为，包括重复性运动。 自闭症患者的社交沟通差异已得到广泛研究，特别是运动技能 与语音生成相关的那些，仍然没有得到充分研究，鉴于日益增长的文献中的差距是令人惊讶的。 有证据表明，运动差异是最早出现的，是自闭症的一个具有临床意义的特征 这是许多核心症状的基础，并且与接受性和表达性语言技能相关。 初步研究表明，存在与言语产生和相关的基于运动的大脑差异 这些结果表明，言语产生的运动行为可能在自闭症的语言中发挥着关键作用。 在自闭症中观察到的沟通挑战，然而言语运动特征的大脑和行为基础 目前我们还没有很好地表征。 通过改进自闭症个体的特征描述，了解自闭症患者的差异和相关的功能后果 在这里，我建议检验以下假设： 与自闭症患者相比，自闭症患者的言语运动大脑区域在言语产生任务中参与度较低 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。 将招募 30 名 NT 成年人和 45 名具有不同语言特征的自闭症成年人进行功能磁共振成像研究，并与深度学习相结合 在目标 1 中，我将使用一种新颖的功能定位器来识别和表征语音行为表型。 在目标 2 中，我将每个参与者的语音生成网络进行比较。 将使用这些单独的网络作为感兴趣的区域来检查语言期间的大脑激活- 相关的言语产生任务，非单词重复作为目标 2 的一部分，我将进行深度言语和语言。 我将对自闭症成年人进行表型分析，以获得他们沟通技巧的全面概况。 然后检查非单词重复期间的言语产生激活与每个单词之间的关系 这些目标将产生一个新颖的定位器来描述参与者的言语、语言和运动特征。 言语产生区域，阐明 NT 和自闭症成人之间的言语运动大脑差异，以及 提供有关言语产生相关运动区域和沟通之间关系的重要见解 从这个项目中获得的知识将有助于更好地理解运动系统在自闭症中的作用。 自闭症患者跨不同语言表型的交流。