Improving inclusion of individuals with intellectual disability in autism neuroscience research - Project Summary/Abstract Individuals with autism and intellectual disability (ASD+ID) comprise a significant portion of the autism spectrum but have historically been excluded from most neuroscience research. As a result, little is understood about differences in brain function among those with the most significant need, and neuroscientific understanding in autism represents only a subset of the autistic community. The current project aims to bridge this knowledge gap by applying innovative technological and clinical approaches to include 70 6-11-year-old children with ASD+ID and a matched sample of 70 children with ID without ASD (ID) in a rigorous neuroscience study. We apply novel hardware and software solutions according to a behavioral protocol designed by a Board Certified Behavior Analyst. Automated quantification of visual attention and bodily movements, along with individualized reinforcers, supports participant behavior conducive to data collection. Electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking (ET) data streams are co-registered for simultaneous, multimodal collection of neural and visual attentional data. This approach is applied to collect assays that are well-evidenced in ASD without ID (ASD-ID), appropriate for those with ASD+ID, and associated with key facets of social-communication relevant to autism: the N170 event-related potential (ERP), which quantifies neural response to faces, and proportion of looking to faces, measured by ET. These assays are collected using experimental paradigms validated in the Autism Biomarkers Consortium for Clinical Trials (ABC-CT), a multisite study collecting highly reliable EEG and ET data in ASD-ID and typical- developing children (TD). By using these assays, we can compare the data collected here to the large ABC-CT samples to understand differences specifically informative about ASD+ID and ID. Strong preliminary data demonstrate this approach is feasible and yields robust psychometric information that is uniquely relevant to ASD+ID and associated with clinical characteristics. This innovative project uses a suite of contingent technologies to acclimate participants to the testing environment and apparatus, attenuate motion, permit real- time feedback on data quality, and support post-processing of artifact using computer vision derived motion estimates. High impact stems from application of promising indices of social-communication to an understudied population with great potential to benefit from novel neurobehavioral insights. By optimizing an innovative clinical and technological approach to data collection in ASD+ID and disseminating it to other researchers, this research will also yield indirect impact beyond the specific findings of this study. The long term goal of this line of research is to develop sensitive and objective indices of social-communicative function to improve clinical research in ASD by informing stratification of autistic individuals into more homogenous subgroups for intervention selection or clinical trial enrichment and to measure treatment response effectively and efficiently.
