Understanding the Mechanisms of Autism : an MRI and Social Cognition Study

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are neurodevelopmental disorders whose first manifestations appear early in childhood. Even if ASDs present a wide heterogeneity in clinical manifestations, abnormalities in social behavior, characterized in particular by a lack of preference for social information, remain the core of difficulties characteristic of autism.

Brain imaging investigations have revealed anatomo-functional abnormalities in autism, particularly in social brain regions. In parallel, eye-tracking studies have provided objective measures of social perception abnormalities in autism. These results illustrate the relevance of these research strategies in the context of ASD. Acquiring objective data on social behavior and linking them with brain imaging data opens up new avenues for research into the evolution of social skills during child development, and the brain changes underlying this process.

In this context, the main hypothesis of this study is that the investigation of the neural bases of autism spectrum disorders, using an approach combining multimodal brain imaging and the investigation of social behavior using eye-tracking, would make it possible not only to better describe abnormalities, but also to identify individual patterns at brain and behavioral level. This could help to better characterize ASDs with and without genetic abnormalities, an area which to date has received very little investigation. In addition, the objective measurements obtained with this approach would also enable the proposal of biomarkers, which would contribute not only to better monitoring of the disorder's evolution, but also to the evaluation of the effectiveness of new therapeutic interventions

• Measurements of white matter microstructure - fractional anisotropy [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Measurements of white matter microstructure - mean diffusivity [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Measurements of white matter microstructure - radial diffusivity [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Measurements of white matter microstructure - axial diffusivity [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Measurements of resting state functional connectivity [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Correlation between social perception and multimodal brain imaging [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Correlation between clinical severity and multimodal brain imaging [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Imaging abnormalities associated with known genetic mutations [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Social perception abnormalities associated with known genetic mutations [Срок оценки: at inclusion]
• Anatomic changes over time - study of developmental trajectory [Срок оценки: 2 years]
• Social perception changes over time - study of developmental trajectory [Срок оценки: 2 years]
• Brain imaging in young children associated with ASD [Срок оценки: at inclusion]