Cognitive Neuroscience of Autism Spectrum Disorders

Objective: The primary objective of the proposed studies is to utilize neuroimaging (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging [fMRI], structural MRI [sMRI], Magnetoencephalography [MEG]) and neuropsychological tools (eye-tracking, cognitive experiments, clinical neuropsychological measures, questionnaires, etc.) to identify cognitive idiosyncrasies (e.g., social-cognitive deficits, visual perceptual assets, and savant skills) characteristic of individuals on the autism spectrum and their neural underpinnings across childhood and adulthood.

Study Population: Children, adolescents, and adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), controls (i.e., typically developing children, adolescents, and adults and those with mild to moderate mental retardation), as well as caregivers/legal guardians/parents of these individuals.

Design: Descriptive/Characterization/Observational studies using primarily neuropsychological and neuroimaging methodologies.

Outcome Measures: Behavioral (reaction time, accuracy, eye movements, etc.) and neuroimaging (brain morphometry, BOLD, electrophysiology, etc.).

• INCLUSION CRITERIA:

Subjects will include:

• males and females.
• 5-89 years of age.
• A minimum IQ of 70

Subjects in the ASD group will:

• meet DSM-IV criteria for one of the pervasive developmental disorders (i.e., autistic disorder, Asperger disorder, or pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified).
• meet or pass the autism cut-off score for social symptoms on the ADI and/or the ASD cut-off score from social+communication symptoms on the ADOS.
• be able to provide their own consent (for adults).

For inclusion in the facial recognition substudy, subjects must be:

• ages 18 to 35
• in good health
• with bad memory of faces

Exclusion criteria

All subjects, except for savants, also will be excluded if they have:

• a history of neurological insult/injury.
• substantial prenatal drug exposure known to affect later brain and behavior (e.g., cocaine, alcohol).
• severely premature birth or birth trauma.
• severe medical disorder (e.g., neurofibromatosis, hydrocephalus, cerebral palsy, uncontrollable seizure disorder).
• a known genetic disorder (e.g., Fragile X or Down syndrome) that would be expected to significantly impact findings from cognitive testing and/or neuroimaging.

Furthermore, subjects will be excluded from MRI/MEG studies, if they have:

• any exclusion from MRI scanning including: the presence of metal in their body, having a pacemaker, and/or females who are pregnant.

Healthy volunteers, except for parents of individuals with autism spectrum disorders and parents of healthy volunteers, will also be excluded if they have:

• a current or past history of axis I psychiatric conditions or any current usage of psychiatric medication.

Savants have less restrictive exclusionary criteria because: 1) they are a very rare group, thus we don t want to limit recruitment further and 2) we can examine common and unique cognitive mechanisms across savants, a question of keen interest, regardless of co-morbidities. Those with tumors or other neuroimaging-relevant contraindications will be excluded from fMRI/MEG procedures.