Abstract

The purpose of this program project is to determine the biological and environmental contributors to social communicative deficits and skills in autism. This project will investigate genetic, brain mechanisms, and environmental factors with a focus both on differentiating autistic individuals from others and also on accounting for individual differences within the autistic group. The approaches to be used are as follows: 1) an investigation of precursors, correlates, and consequences of social communicative skills in autistic children and adolescents; 2) an experiment aimed at changing social communicative skills in very young children with autism; 3) a genetic study of individuals at risk of autism and associated social communicative deficits because of inverted duplication portion chromosome 15 [invdup(15)]; and 4) a comparison of the neural networks activated in processes involved in communication, including recognition and response to faces, emotions, and prosody, using fMRI with adolescents and young adults with autism and non- autistic language impairment. The results of these studies will have immediate impact on planning intervention to optimize the development of autistic children and long-term impact on discovering the causes and mechanisms involved in the disorder.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD)
Type
Research Program Projects (P01)
Project #
5P01HD035470-03
Application #
2889373
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZHD1-MRG-C (04))
Program Officer
Hanson, James W
Project Start
1997-06-01
Project End
2002-05-31
Budget Start
1999-06-01
Budget End
2000-05-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1999
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
University of California Los Angeles
Department
Pediatrics
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
119132785
City
Los Angeles
State
CA
Country
United States
Zip Code
90095

  Publications

Freeman, Stephanny F N; Gulsrud, Amanda; Kasari, Connie (2015) Brief Report: Linking Early Joint Attention and Play Abilities to Later Reports of Friendships for Children with ASD. J Autism Dev Disord 45:2259-66
Siller, Michael; Swanson, Meghan; Gerber, Alan et al. (2014) A parent-mediated intervention that targets responsive parental behaviors increases attachment behaviors in children with ASD: results from a randomized clinical trial. J Autism Dev Disord 44:1720-32
Gulsrud, Amanda C; Hellemann, Gerhard S; Freeman, Stephanny F N et al. (2014) Two to ten years: developmental trajectories of joint attention in children with ASD who received targeted social communication interventions. Autism Res 7:207-15
Siller, Michael; Hutman, Ted; Sigman, Marian (2013) A parent-mediated intervention to increase responsive parental behaviors and child communication in children with ASD: a randomized clinical trial. J Autism Dev Disord 43:540-55
Lawton, Kathy; Kasari, Connie (2012) Brief report: longitudinal improvements in the quality of joint attention in preschool children with autism. J Autism Dev Disord 42:307-12
Davies, Mari S; Dapretto, Mirella; Sigman, Marian et al. (2011) Neural bases of gaze and emotion processing in children with autism spectrum disorders. Brain Behav 1:1-11
Hogart, Amber; Wu, David; LaSalle, Janine M et al. (2010) The comorbidity of autism with the genomic disorders of chromosome 15q11.2-q13. Neurobiol Dis 38:181-91
Scott-Van Zeeland, Ashley A; McNealy, Kristin; Wang, A Ting et al. (2010) No neural evidence of statistical learning during exposure to artificial languages in children with autism spectrum disorders. Biol Psychiatry 68:345-51
Scott-Van Zeeland, Ashley A; Abrahams, Brett S; Alvarez-Retuerto, Ana I et al. (2010) Altered functional connectivity in frontal lobe circuits is associated with variation in the autism risk gene CNTNAP2. Sci Transl Med 2:56ra80
Scott-Van Zeeland, Ashley A; Dapretto, Mirella; Ghahremani, Dara G et al. (2010) Reward processing in autism. Autism Res 3:53-67

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