Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Difficulty in the ability to imitate the actions of others represents a core behavioural deficit in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Imitation is thought to be crucial for the development of social faculties; therefore, deficits in imitation are believed to underlie central clinical symptoms of ASD. Recent findings from neuroscience suggest abnormal functioning of the mirror neuron system - a system of brain regions important for action imitation - in imitation deficits and other symptoms of ASD. The present study takes a novel approach to clarify the relationship between imitation deficits and mirror neuron system dysfunction in ASD. ASD participants and healthy control participants will undergo an fMRI scan while presented with video clips of unfamiliar and complex hand gestures, with the instruction that they will be required to imitate them in a subsequent task. This task is designed to elicit brain activation in regions involved in action imitation. Participants will then complete a similar task outside the fMRI scanner in which they will be tested on their ability to imitate the gestures from the previous task. Imitation performance will be rated for accuracy and compared between ASD and control participants in relation to brain functioning. It is hypothesized that ASD participants will have poorer imitation performance and reduced mirror neuron system brain activation compared to controls, and that activation of the mirror neuron system will be correlated with accuracy of imitation performance. This research will contribute to a better understanding of brain activation anomalies in ASD and their relation to important symptoms of the disorder. Understanding this relationship may help with facilitating earlier diagnosis and identifying new targets for treatment.