Research is the key to the future

Most people are not aware of the role that research plays in their daily life. Fortunately, research goes on and advances are made without most people having to know anything about it. In autism, however, research advances are directly linked to the willingness of individuals and their families to volunteer and their advocacy in congress research funding. Thus, it is important that people with autism or a related disorder and their families become aware of what research has accomplished for them. Autism research and progress is a team sport. The team players are individuals with the disorder, their families, researchers, parent organizations, universities, and funding sources.

Most people never think about where diagnostic criteria, medications, and intervention methods actually come from or why they change and improve over time.

Autism was first described by a researcher, Leo Kanner, who was a professor of child psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. His research mission was to recognize new disorders, find a number of children with similar signs and symptoms, and then prepare a report for publication in a medical journal that described this common set of symptoms. Thus, autism was officially recognized. Researchers then began to investigate possible causes. Several decades of research ultimately determined that autism was not caused by parenting practices, but by abnormalities in the brain. By the 1970's, research began investigating the cognitive and brain basis of autism and the result was the first neurobehavioral (brain-behavior) models. These models proposed a core cognitive deficit and an abnormal brain region. As each model was subjected to further testing, more and more was learned about the cognitive deficits and the brain in autism. These research endeavors were reflected in the development of a special category for autism and autism spectrum disorders in the official diagnostic manuals for behavioral and neurologic disorders. Since 1980, there have been three revisions of these diagnostic criteria and classifications for autism spectrum disorders with major improvements in the criteria. Each of these versions has reflected the results of extensive research and the growing understanding of the cognitive basis of behavior in autism and the related disorders. The growing evidence for autism as a disorder of brain and cognitive development and as a family genetic disorder demonstrated to the broader scientific community the tremendous importance that autism had for understanding human function, brain development, and genetic regulation of brain development. An understanding of these processes is key to developing very powerful interventions in this and other disorders. All of these events have led to substantial improvements in the recognition of autism and related disorders and earlier and earlier diagnosis. The goal now is to begin wide spread screening at 18 months by primary care physicians and 0-3 programs. Research has also meant that there are professionals who spend full time in the study of this "rare" but not so rare disorder; these people are a resource for the entire community and educate practitioners. There may not be enough of them and their influence might be too narrow, but their presence even in small numbers has brought about considerable progress.

Research Goals

The central theme of this program is that autism is a disorder of information processing that disproportionately impacts complex information processing. This results from abnormal development of integrative circuitry in neural systems and specialization of local circuitry in neocortex. This is exhibited in deficient higher order cognitive processes, reduced fMRI activation of executive and semantic processing regions during complex information processing, and a local processing approach to cognitive tasks. Project I will focus on concept abstraction as it applies to object categories, face recognition (gender and identity) and facial affect recognition. Project II will investigate the perceptual competence of the ventral visual stream and its development using microgenetic analysis to examine the behavioral and neural mechanisms mediating face and object recognition and the capacity of subjects to derive configurations from local elements. Project III will investigate disturbances in oculomotor control, sensory hyperacuities, lateralized disturbances of brain function, and the developmental acquisition of executive cognitive functions in childhood and adolescence. Project IV will investigate brain connectivity by evaluating the synchronization of activity across brain regions involved in language comprehension tasks, and the development of reasoning and problem solving abilities. In addition to laboratory studies, Projects II-IV will use MRI to evaluate disturbances in brain maturation and functional cortical integration. The Administrative Core will provide administrative, fiscal and scientific oversight for the program project and a nidus for scientific interactions and training of junior scientists. It will also support our participation in network governance and cross-site studies. The Subject & Genetics Core will recruit the subjects for the Projects, complete the network common measures and other measures as needed for network studies, and conduct the CPEA Network Genetics studies. The Statistical Analysis and Image Processing Core will provide statistical support to the projects and continue statistical research on methods for improving the processing and analysis of fMRI data.