Grant: Operating Grant

Whereas most persons within the autistic spectrum present a major speech delay and/or impairment, other individuals, known as Asperger syndrome, exhibit early language development while presenting similar social and repetitive symptoms. Better understanding this puzzling pattern of language performance in autism spectrum is particularly important, because communication deficits are the major predictor of adaptive outcome in autism. New results from our laboratory suggest an explanation of this puzzle through a common brain plasticity mechanism, which are the way our brain compensated for an injury or a deficit. In autistic people with language impairment, speech would be mainly processed through an enhanced functioning of perception. This would result in language impairment and superior visuospatial and auditory performance. In contrast, in those with Asperger's syndrome most information would be processed through an overextension of language-related processes, resulting in language, but not visuo-spatial or auditory performance peaks. We will therefore test the hypothesis that the two presentations within the autistic spectrum, autism and Asperger, are the result of a common mechanism of brain plasticity, applied to two different domains. This will be done by comparing the perceptual and language performance of autistic children with and without language impairment, and compare them with language impaired non autistic children and typical children without autism. We will also use visual and auditory tasks and fMRI in adults autistic participants with and without an history of language impairment. This will allow detecting how the brain regions typically devoted to perception and language are differently overextended in these two groups. Beyond the development of future educational techniques of language based on language of perceptual strengths, this project, if successful, will represent a major step in our understanding of brain mechanisms associated to autism.