Improving fMRI studies of children with autism by correcting for head motion

The Martinos Center's Dara Manoach and Andre van der Kouwe have been awarded a new grant to advance the study of brain networks in children with autism.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) allows researchers to monitor brain activity in human subjects while they are performing particular tasks, revealing the brain regions dedicated to specific functions while also shedding light on the information flow between the regions. Using fMRI, researchers have already begun to glean a deeper understanding of disorders of brain connectivity. This isn't always easy, though. Head movement during scanning can lead to distortions in the image and children with autism, for example, tend to move more than their peers.

Now, Manoach, van der Kouwe and colleagues are planning to address this challenge using a grant recently awarded by the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering, a collaborative program between Harvard Medical School and the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. After developing means to detect and correct for head motion in children and other patients who have trouble keeping still, they will apply them in testing abnormal connectivity between brain regions—a possible cause of autism—with fMRI scans of autistic children. Finally, they will seek to determine whether these connections can be improved with autism treatments currently in use.

The experiments could have considerable impact—in advancing our understandings of the role of connectivity in autism but also in addressing the problems inherent in performing fMRI in moving patients.

"We are particularly interested in the approximately 30% of children with autism who remain minimally verbal into their school years," Manoach said. "These individuals have seldom been studied with MRI because previous techniques have required them to perform a task and remain perfectly still. Using resting state scans, new techniques to mitigate motion and new analysis methods that characterize the dynamics of brain connectivity, we plan to illuminate the neural basis of speech and language impairment and to identify predictors of treatment response so we can target therapies more effectively."

The grant is one of five recently announced by the Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering. Each of these comes with the stipulation that the project be an equal collaboration between the U.S.- and Swiss-based researchers, at Harvard and EPFL, respectively, which encourages new interdisciplinary projects leading to novel approaches to established problems. 

“When my family and I had the vision for this program, it was based upon bringing together scientists and medical specialists from different disciplines and countries to really push the boundaries of neuroscience and neuroengineering, creating a melting-pot of different talents, passions and visions united by a commitment to find ground-breaking ways to treat people and to make their lives better," Ernesto Bertarelli, co-chair of the Bertarelli Foundation, said in a statement. "What has been achieved since 2011 is highly encouraging. What might be achieved with these new research projects is just as exciting.”