Grant: Project Grant

Social cognition has emerged as an important predictor of functional outcome in individuals with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders (SSD) and Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Even though social cognitive impairments are major drivers of the severe societal and personal impact of these disorders, few treatment options for social deficits are available. Biologically targeted treatments that can improve outcomes are desperately needed. To address this issue, our research program is studying social processes in individuals with SSD, ASD and typically developing controls, using a comprehensive battery of social, cognitive, clinical and functional behavioural assessments, and multimodal neuroimaging. Using neuroimaging data in combination with behavioural tests, we have identified brain-function based sub-groupings of participants that are unrelated to diagnosis but related to social cognitive performance. While we have identified sub-groups, emerging data from our team suggests that these relationships may be better characterized along continuous dimensions that have yet to be revealed (or "latent" dimensions). The first aim of this study will be to refine "latent" brain-behaviour dimensions cutting across participants with an SSD, an ASD, or typically developing controls. The second aim is to retest a subset of participants and establish whether these proposed underlying dimensions are stable over time. Our findings could inform the development of mechanism-based treatments to enhance social cognition and social function in people with SSD or ASD.