This Mentored Patient-Oriented Research Career Development Award, a program of research and career development, is proposed to establish a foundation for future independent research in functional neuroimaging, with a focus on social cognition in autism. The research component of the proposal is based on the hypothesis that autism will be associated with an abnormal pattern of brain activity while performing the social cognitive tasks with relative decreases in the amygdala and associated areas that are both necessary for social cognition and disordered behaviorally and neuropathologically in autism.
The Specific Aims of the study are: 1) To identify the functional neuroanatomy that underlies social cognitive dysfunction in autism by the use of an implicit interpersonal threat (IIT) task that has been validated to activate an amygdala network in normal subjects. 2) To develop additional behavioral tasks that may be used in conjunction with functional imaging to further characterize social cognition in autism and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Investigators will characterize the limitations in social cognition in relation to performance on a moral judgment task, designed to differentiate between personal/high-emotion moral judgment and impersonal/low-emotion moral judgment. This task activates medial prefrontal and posterior cingulated cortex, areas of the brain that are also engaged during theory of mind tasks in normal subjects, and not in autistic subjects, despite similar performance. The extensive training portion of this proposal consists of clinical neuroscience and neuropsychology coursework and seminars, as well as hands-on instruction in behavioral analysis and fMRI imaging techniques. The multimodal studies that are outlined in the current proposal, and which contain psychophysiological, behavioral, and functional neuroimaging information, will permit the investigator to expand her area of expertise in clinical neuropsychiatry, affective processing and positron emission tomography to functional magnetic resonance imaging with specific focus on social disabilities in neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism. The proposed research will utilize combined bottom-up (social emotional evaluation) and top-down (higher order social cognition) approaches, with the IIT task and moral judgment task, respectively, to further our understanding of social cognitive dysfunction in autism. By combining these approaches and data, it is anticipated that we will begin to examine, in greater depth, social cognitive dysfunction in autism as it relates to affective processing and theory of mind, and as reflected in neural, psychological, and behavioral responses. This line of investigation is likely to improve our understanding and treatment of autism, a prevalent and chronic public health problem. ? ?
