Grant will fund study of autism

One of the classic symptoms of autism is difficulty in interpreting other people’s emotions. Caltech professor of psychology and neuroscience Ralph Adolphs has received a $120,000 grant from the foundation Cure Autism Now to study how autistic patients process information about other people’s facial expressions. The award will supplement Adolphs’s ongoing work to understand the role of the amygdala, a structure in the brain, in certain disorders.

There is tantalizing evidence that the challenge for autistic persons may not be entirely an inability to read facial expressions, but rather the lack of ability or inclination to focus on faces so that expressions can be processed. Better knowledge of how people with autism look at faces could result in interventions that coach patients to concentrate their attention on facial expressions, ultimately helping them improve their social functioning.

The two-year pilot research award will first fund a close study of how subjects view faces, followed the second year with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) research using Caltech’s new scanners.

“If our hypotheses are supported, the implications might be dramatic for rehabilitation,” Adolphs says. “In a sense, we could be helping people with autism to see the world socially by telling them specifically how to look at the world with their eye movements.”

Founded in 1995, Cure Autism Now is an organization comprising parents, clinicians, and leading scientists committed to accelerating the pace of autism research. Since its beginning, the organization has committed more than $23 million to research, outreach, and education efforts.

•