Emotional Proactive Brain Study in Adults With Autism Spectrum Condition

Completed

• Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Interventions: Other: EEG

• Registration Number: NCT04069676
• Lead Sponsor: University Hospital, Grenoble

Brief Summary

This project aims:

* to study behavioral and cerebral activity specificity (latency and amplitude of evoked potentials, time frequency maps and cerebral connectivity) in predictive process (top-down regulation) during visual recognition of static and dynamic stimuli in adults participants with autism spectrum conditions compared to typically developed participants.

* to study the relation between predictive process and autonomous response (heart activity and electrodermal activity)

* to explore potential sex differences between autistic males and females

Detailed Description

Once eligibility criteria would have been verified, information on the study will be given and non opposition of the participant will be collected.Then, the participant will be comfortably installed in order to pass the Landolt C task (visual acuity task) on a computer. If his vision is normal, electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) of participants, will be recorded during visual processing and recognition tasks. Stimuli will include emotional and non emotional pictures and films, filtered in coarse-to-fine versus fine-to-coarse sequences in order to stimulate or not predictive process described by Bar (2007).

The participant will also have to complete an abbreviated version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, IVth edition (Wechsler, 2003), and the Autism Spectrum Quotient (Baron-Cohen et al., 2001) if he never did it before. The aim is to pair as much as possible group by IQ and to verify that control participants don't present autistic traits above the Autism Spectrum Quotient cutoff. Groups will also be paired by age and education level.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2019-08-23
• Study First Submitted QC: 2019-08-23
• Study First Posted: 2019-08-28
• Study Start: 2020-09-17
• Primary Completion: 2021-07-12
• Study Completion: 2021-07-12
• Status Verified: 2022-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2022-05-06
• Last Update Posted: 2022-05-09

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 94

Inclusion Criteria

• affiliation to the french social protection care
• information and non opposition of the participant
• information and non opposition of tutor/curator if the case presented
• normal or corrected to normal vision
• capacity to understand and apply instruction required by the task
• no participation in another research
• for autistic person: formal diagnosis of autism spectrum condition (autism/asperger/PDD-NS) according to CIM-10/DSM-IV/DSM-5 criteria

Exclusion Criteria

• adults with no ability to express their consent
• adults on judiciary protection
• perceptive/motor/neurological/psychiatric issue
• major health issue (cardiac, metabolic ...)
• alcohol or drug consumption

Study & Design

• Study Type: OBSERVATIONAL
• Study Design: Not specified

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Typically developped (TD)	EEG	Adults males and females without any neurodevelopemental issue (or health issue which could impaired task performances)
Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC)	EEG	Adults males and females with a formal autism diagnosis, without intellectual disability

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Differences between autistic and typically developed participants in evoked potentials related to prediction mechanisms during visual processing	55 minutes recording	- differences in evoked potentials (latency and amplitude) Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated how predictive mechanism during visual perception are affected in autism regarding cerebral activity.
Differences between autistic and typically developed participants in behavioral responses related to prediction mechanisms during visual processing	55 minutes (same recording as before)	- differences in behavioral responses (reaction time and correct response rate) Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated how predictive mechanism during visual perception are affected in autism regarding behavioral response.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Differences between groups in autonomous activity	55 minutes (same record as before)	* ECG activity (HRV analysis); * electrodermal activity (EDA) Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated how predictive mechanism during visual perception are affected in autism regarding autonomous activity.
Sex differences	55 minutes (same record as before)	- sex differences analysis Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated the existence of sex differences in autism regarding predictive process during visual perception.
Difference between groups in cerebral connectivity	55 minutes (same record as before)	- differences in Dynamic Causal Modeling Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated how predictive mechanism during visual perception are affected in autism regarding cerebral activity.
Differences between groups in oscillatory activity	55 minutes (same record as before)	-differences in time-frequency maps. Changes will be assessed between coarse-to-fine and fine-to-coarse sequencies. It will be used to investigated how predictive mechanism during visual perception are affected in autism regarding cerebral activity.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

Chu Grenoble Alpes; 🇫🇷 Grenoble, France