Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are a group of neurodevelopmental disorders that affects roughly 1 in 59 children, and is characterized by a range of behavioural and communication impairments. This variation in symptoms, along with the more than 100 genes thought to contribute to ASD, makes identifying effective therapies extremely challenging. Impairments in sensory processing and habituation learning (a type of learning where one learns to stop responding to repetitive stimuli) are reported in up to 90 percent of ASD cases. The high presence of sensory processing and habituation learning impairments suggests that ASD-associated genes may be acting together in common pathways to control these behaviours. Identifying these common pathways provides a unique opportunity to investigate why sensory and learning impairments occur when different ASD-associated genes are affected and inform us of new therapeutic targets to help individuals with these behavioural and learning difficulties. I will use the established Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model system to investigate if ASD risk genes function together to regulate sensory processing and learning. I propose to 1) define common molecular pathways affected in ASD that contribute to sensory and learning impairments, 2) identify where in the nervous system and when in development ASD risk genes function together, and 3) determine whether behavioural impairments caused by the inactivity of one gene can be rescued by targeting the activity of another gene. I believe this research will significantly improve our understanding of the function of ASD-associated genes, the mechanisms of ASD pathology, and progress our ability to identify new therapies for the individuals with ASD who experience sensory and habituation learning impairments.