Clinical trial NCT04069676: Emotional Proactive Brain Study in Adults With Autism Spectrum Condition
Official title: Emotional Proactive Brain Study in Adults With Autism Spectrum Condition
Study type: OBSERVATIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Condition
predictive coding
visual perception
electroencephalography
autonomous nervous system
heart rate variability
electrodermal reactivity
Lead sponsor: University Hospital, Grenoble
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition
First posted: 2019-08-28
Enrollment: 94
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Maximum age (years): 50
Standard ages: ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Observational model: COHORT
Time perspective: PROSPECTIVE
Sampling method: NON_PROBABILITY_SAMPLE
Study population: Adults autistic males and females without intellectual disability compared to a control group

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.

Eligibility criteria: 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

Primary outcomes:
measure: Differences between autistic and typically developed participants in evoked potentials related to prediction mechanisms during visual processing
timeFrame: 55 minutes recording
measure: Differences between autistic and typically developed participants in behavioral responses related to prediction mechanisms during visual processing
timeFrame: 55 minutes (same recording as before)
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Differences between groups in oscillatory activity
timeFrame: 55 minutes (same record as before)
measure: Difference between groups in cerebral connectivity
timeFrame: 55 minutes (same record as before)
measure: Differences between groups in autonomous activity
timeFrame: 55 minutes (same record as before)
measure: Sex differences
timeFrame: 55 minutes (same record as before)
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Grenoble
country: France
facility: Chu Grenoble Alpes
Study officials:
affiliation: University Hospital, Grenoble
name: Laurent Vercueil, Doctor
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Bar M. The proactive brain: using analogies and associations to generate predictions. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007 Jul;11(7):280-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2007.05.005. Epub 2007 Jun 4.
citation: Caplette L, Wicker B, Gosselin F. Atypical Time Course of Object Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Sci Rep. 2016 Oct 18;6:35494. doi: 10.1038/srep35494.
citation: Gomot M, Wicker B. A challenging, unpredictable world for people with autism spectrum disorder. Int J Psychophysiol. 2012 Feb;83(2):240-7. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.09.017. Epub 2011 Oct 1.
citation: Peyrin C, Michel CM, Schwartz S, Thut G, Seghier M, Landis T, Marendaz C, Vuilleumier P. The neural substrates and timing of top-down processes during coarse-to-fine categorization of visual scenes: a combined fMRI and ERP study. J Cogn Neurosci. 2010 Dec;22(12):2768-80. doi: 10.1162/jocn.2010.21424.
citation: Quintana DS, Guastella AJ, Outhred T, Hickie IB, Kemp AH. Heart rate variability is associated with emotion recognition: direct evidence for a relationship between the autonomic nervous system and social cognition. Int J Psychophysiol. 2012 Nov;86(2):168-72. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.08.012. Epub 2012 Aug 30.
citation: Sinha P, Kjelgaard MM, Gandhi TK, Tsourides K, Cardinaux AL, Pantazis D, Diamond SP, Held RM. Autism as a disorder of prediction. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2014 Oct 21;111(42):15220-5. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1416797111. Epub 2014 Oct 6.
citation: Thayer JF, Ahs F, Fredrikson M, Sollers JJ 3rd, Wager TD. A meta-analysis of heart rate variability and neuroimaging studies: implications for heart rate variability as a marker of stress and health. Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2012 Feb;36(2):747-56. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.11.009. Epub 2011 Dec 8.