NIH http://www.nih.gov is awarding $100 million over the next five years to support nine Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE). The funds will help researchers working on large projects understand and develop interventions for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).
ASD is a complex developmental disorder affecting how a person behaves, interacts with others, communicates, and learns. The CDC estimates that ASD affects nearly 2% of children 8 years old in the U.S.
The ACE program supports research on the diagnosis, causes of, and interventions for ASD. The program also seeks to facilitate innovative and cost effective services for people with ASD throughout their lifespan.
The awards support research at individual centers which feature collaboration between teams of experts and research networks. The research networks involve multiple institutions studying ASD.
Each ACE will adopt a specific Plan for Enhancing Diverse Perspectives (PEDP) as part of their proposed research. The PEDP will outline strategies to increase participation of women and individuals from traditionally under-represented groups in the ACE biomedical, behavioral and clinical workforce. The PEDP intends to increase the participation of underrepresented and underserved populations in the research.
The nine 2022 Grants were awarded to Columbia University Health Sciences, Stanford University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Drexel University, Duke University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Pittsburgh. University of Virginia, and Johns Hopkins University.
One of the awards to Duke University will be used to develop translational Digital Health and Computational Approach to Early Identification, Outcome Monitoring, and Biomarker Discovery in ASD.
The researchers at Duke will study a digital app used at home on smart phones and tablets used to videotape young children’s behavior and interactions with their caregivers. AI and computer vision will automatically code the videotapes to identify behavioral characteristics of children who are later diagnosed with autism and track their long term development.
The research team will also use AI to analyze electroencephalograms (brain wave activity), to be synchronized with videotaped behavior of 3-6 year old children to identify brain activity associated with accompanying behaviors characteristic of ASD.
The ACE program is supported by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.