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Below are descriptions of the Communications grants that are currently active. To view a list of past grants in this area, please click on the link below.
Communications - Past Grants |
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA
2008
Principal Investigator: Gottfried Schlaug , MD , Ph.D.
Using Melodic Intonation to Facilitate Improvement in Language
and Communication Skills in Autistic Children
One
characteristic of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), perhaps
the most heartbreaking, is the deficiency in communication
skills. Unfortunately, interventions aimed at improving
verbal output and/or communication skills are relatively
few and have had limited success. However, since autistic
children who often respond to music better than spoken language
enjoy engaging in music-making, treatment methods that use
music–based activities may provide an effective alternative
or complement to traditional interventions for facilitating
speech. The observation that many autistic children can
sing, even when unable to speak, is strikingly similar to
the disassociation seen in patients with Broca's aphasia
who can sing the lyrics of a song better than they can speak
the same words. Using a rehabilitative technique, Melodic
Intonation Therapy, (MIT), that emphasizes the prosodic
quality of speech through slow, pitched vocalizations (singing),
has lead to significant improvement in speech production
in such non-fluent aphasic patients. Since singing requires
neural coupling of sounds with motor actions (e.g., production
of sound (singing/speaking) depends upon the motor action
of articulation), it is possible that MIT is capable of
specifically engaging a 'hearing/doing' network, and thus,
may offer an alternative therapeutic option for improving
language and communication skills in ASD children. One case-report
of the effects of MIT on an autistic 3-year old who had
made no improvement after 1 year of verbal and sign language
treatment, showed that after undergoing an adapted MIT program,
he was capable of speaking in 2-word sentences. This project
will use this music-based speech intervention (MIT) to build
upon the musical strengths observed in autistic individuals
and facilitate communication skills in children with ASD.
Gottfried Schlaug
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston , MA
2006-2009
Principal Investigator: Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, Ph.D.
Improving Language Skills in Autism
Spectrum Disorder by Modulating Prefrontal Activity Noninvasively
This project focuses on improving language abilities of individuals
with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) by using repetitive transcranial
magnetic stimulation (rTMS). rTMS is a non-invasive way to
induce a controlled amount of current in the living human
brain and use it to explore the way in which brain regions
interact to generate behavior. The investigators believe that
language abilities of individuals with ASD are abnormal because
connections between certain brain regions do not function
normally early in life and development results in progressive
maladaptive changes that account for symptoms of disease.
These abnormal connections may relate to a dysfunction in
mirror neurons, which help us understand actions of others
and are critical for language acquisition. Research shows
that mirror neuron function is abnormal in individuals with
ASD. In humans a vast number of mirror neurons are in Broca's
region, a part of the brain that is fundamental for speech
and language. The investigators believe that dysfunction of
mirror cells in this region leads to a faulty connectivity
between Broca's region and other language areas in both halves
of the brain and account for core deficits in individuals
with ASD. Studies in patients with abnormal language due to
a stroke affecting Broca's area (aphasia) reveal that modifying
activity in the pars triangularis of the frontal operculum
with rTMS improves language even after more than 10 years
of aphasia. The investigators will use rTMS to change the activity in the pars triangularis in individuals with ASD
with the hypothesis that it will lead to a language improvement.
It is hoped that this study will provide an improved understanding
of the cause of language deficits in ASD and will lead to
the development of a new treatment strategy that will improve
communication skills and social interactions of those with
ASD.
Alvaro
Pascual-Leone
Centro Studi Sulla Comunicazione Facilitata, Italy
2008
Principal Investigator: Alda Scopesi, Mirella Zanobini
Linguistic Interactions of Autistic Boys in Different Facilitated Contexts
An
important area of autism research concerns the evaluation
of communicative abilities and the effectiveness of interventions
aimed at promoting these competences. Different methods
have been developed to improve verbal language or provide
alternative or augmentative instruments of communication.
Facilitated Communication (FC) is a technique for providing
support to subjects with poor or inexistent verbal abilities
as they convey typed messages. After a long and lively debate
on the validity of FC, in recent years specific guidelines
have been created to allow a progressive increase in the
facilitated subjects' initiatives and spontaneous pointing,
with the aim of total independency. This research project
is inserted into the debate relative to linguistic abilities
of autistic people, with particular reference to analysis
of stylistic, semantic and lexical peculiarities of written
texts produced with the support of FC. A psycholinguistic
analysis can contribute indirectly to the debate on the
authorship and effectiveness of the facilitated production.
Furthermore, it could represent an opportunity to understand
autistic people's subjectivity.
This study analyses the linguistic interactions of autistic
boys – who need a minimal level of physical support - in
different facilitated contexts, with the aim of exploring:
• the presence of original expressions and typical linguistic
characteristics, potentially indicative of the relative
linguistic independence and authorship of the facilitated
writings;
• the presence of semantic and stylistic peculiarities,
with particular reference to the psychological lexicon of
people with autism;
• the nature and development of the dialogue between the
facilitated and facilitator and the influence of the facilitator's
characteristics on the facilitated language in general and
in particular on the use of the psychological lexicon.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD
2008
Principal Investigator: Barry Gordon, MD, Ph.D. and Kerry Ledoux, Ph.D.
Subclinical
Communications and Vocalizations in Autism: Investigation
by Video/Audio Surveillance, Eye Movements, and Evoked Potentials
Many individuals affected by autism never
seem to be able to speak or to understand speech. Yet their
families and therapists often suspect that such individuals
“know” more than they can express, despite the skepticism
of those who do not know the individual as well. This may
be because such individuals actually do have internal thoughts,
even internal “speech” of some kind, but they appear to be
oblivious and mute because their communicative efforts are
so fleeting or atypical that they are not recognized, except
by people familiar with their behavior. In this study, the
investigator will apply four accepted and rigorous objective
methods to try to determine if such individuals can “know”
more than they seem to know, and can “express” more than they
can express through traditional routes. The four methods are:
1) intensive audio-video surveillance; (2) eye movement recording;
(3) pupillary diameter monitoring; and (4) electrical activity
recorded through the scalp, analyzed looking for a particular
wave (the N400 wave). Phase 1 of this research will attempt
to establish the validity of the different measures by examining
what they show in individuals with autism who can speak and
communicate. Phase 2 will try to determine if a different
set of participants, individuals with autism who have little
or no speech, show some types of comprehension or expression
on any or all of these measures in the course of trying to
learn picture-word associations. If this research is successful
to any degree, it would help motivate more concerted efforts
to try to detect such abilities in individuals with autism
who have little or no speech. Perhaps more importantly, this
research would help to justify more aggressive efforts to
explore alternative ways for such individuals to comprehend
and to express themselves.
Barry
Gordon
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
2008
Principal Investigator: Rosalind Picard, Sc.D. and Rana el Kaliouby, Ph.D.
Computerized Interventions to Promote Verbal Expression in Individuals
with Autism Spectrum Disorders
This project is a collaborative effort between Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), Media Laboratory (ML)—an
interdisciplinary research lab at the forefront of creating
new technologies for improving the human experience, and
the Groden Center, Inc.—a non-profit school in Providence,
RI that provides community-based, evaluative, therapeutic,
and educational programs for children and adults with ASD—to
develop computerized intervention technologies that assist
individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in understanding
and producing verbal expressions that carry much of the
communicative and emotional information in language. The
intervention consists of two innovative technology components:
(1) a wearable speech recorder that integrates with a wearable
camera to record faces and speech in dyadic interactions,
and (2) an interactive, computerized game that facilitates
the visualization, and manipulation of speech characteristics,
as well as conversational dynamics. The interactive game
extracts and maps speech characteristics to alternative
sensory channels such as visual or auditory feedback, catering
to the visual and auditory strengths of persons with ASD.
This yearlong research plan consists of the following three
aims: (1) Collect a speech corpus documenting dyadic conversations
between 10 individuals with ASD at the Groden Center and
their staff members; (2) Apply and extend speech-feature
extraction and classification toolkits to the speech corpus
of individuals with ASD; (3) Conduct participatory and experimental
evaluation sessions with 10 students at the Groden Center,
their teachers, parents, and speech-language therapists
to iteratively test and refine the wearable and interactive,
computerized toolkit. This project aims to improve social
communication capacities of persons with ASD, as well as
enable speech-language therapists, teachers, and parents
to assess and teach verbal expression in a novel and fun
way that is individually-tailored for each person's interest,
sensory, and perceptual capabilities.
Rosalind Picard
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
2005-2007
Principal Investigator: Emilio Bizzi, M.D.
Improving the Communication Capabilities of People with Autism Who Use Assisted Typing Through the Use of Mechanical Devices
The goal of this project is to develop a system to improve the communication capabilities and eye-hand coordination of patients with autism. In general terms, the use of the system will be as follows: a set of letters (targets) will be presented sequentially or simultaneously on a screen. An eye-tracking system will record the position of the subject’s eyes as they converge on the target’s spatial location. With the help of an assistive (phantom) device the subject’s finger will be guided to the spatial position of the target. Depending upon the age and spelling ability of the subject, pictures may substitute letters presented on the screen. The system will be comprised of three parts: a) an eye-tracking system, b) a phantom device to which the subject’s finger will be attached and which will help guide them to touch the target, and c) a software interface that will couple the two systems. This system aims to improve subjects’ communication capabilities as well as subjects’ eye-hand coordination.
Bizzi Laboratory
Nottingham Trent University, Milton
Keynes, United Kingdom
2005-2007
Principal Investigator: Andy Grayson, Ph.D.
Eye-Tracking and Facilitated Communication
Facilitated communication (FC) is a strategy which aims to enhance communication skills by helping people learn to point or type. It is controversial when used by people with autism because it involves physical contact between the FC user and facilitator, making it difficult to determine who is responsible for the typing. Some peer-reviewed studies have concluded that the emergent language is being authored by the facilitator, while other peer reviewed studies have concluded that the emergent language is authored by the FC user. Some, but not all speech and language professionals maintain that FC is a useful strategy. This research will use fine-grained video analysis to measure typing-related behaviors in FC users and facilitators. By comparing the same FC users working with different facilitators, and facilitators working with different FC users, inferences about authorship can be drawn based on behavioral inconsistencies. If an FC user is typing, one would expect to see consistency in the way they type letters and words, irrespective of who is giving physical support. This project also explores the usefulness of eye-tracking technology as a means for enhancing understanding of FC. FC users will wear eye-tracking equipment while typing, which shows where they are looking at any given point in time.
Andy Grayson
Oregon Health and Science University ,Portland ,OR
2008
Principal Investigator: Deniz Erdogmus, Ph.D. and Lois Black, Ph.D.
ERP Based Communication Device for Nonverbal Children on the
Autism Spectrum
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) exhibit varying levels
of communication abilities. In this project, the investigator
will address the communication needs of the subset that:
1) lack expressive speech and language; 2) lack ability
to operate a keyboard, pointing device, or other typical
assistive interface; and 3) are assumed to have adequate
cognition, literacy, and receptive language understanding.
This research aims to develop a communication system for
such children. Resulting technology could also benefit other
children and adults with adequate cognition but limited
communication options. The investigator will develop an
assistive communication facilitation device referred to
as the RSVP Keyboard. It unites three technologies: 1) Rapid
serial visual presentation (RSVP, with individually adjustable
presentation rates) of letters/words/phrases; 2) a yes/no
intent detection mechanism based on detecting evoked-response
potentials (ERP) in the brain to determine which target
letter or letters the child wants to convey; 3) a statistical
language model based dynamic sequencing optimization procedure
that computes which letter needs to be presented next to
take advantage of regularities in language. The system will
operate by showing the sequence of candidate letters on
the screen as well as previously typed text, such that words
and phrases are formed naturally by adding selected letters.
The first goal is to test the viability of the basic concept
of facilitated communication through the RSVP Keyboard System.
Upon demonstration of feasibility through neuroimaging and
statistical analysis of brain responses to RSVP stimuli
sequences, the investigator will evaluate performances of
typically developing children and nonverbal children with
ASD in three interactive cognitive tasks.
Deniz Erdogmus
Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR
2008
Principal Investigator: Jan van Santen, Ph.D. and Lois Black, Ph.D.
In Your Own Voice: Personal Augmentative and Alternative Communication
Voices for Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum
Disorders
Many
children with autism who have limited verbal abilities use
Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices
to help them communicate with others. Often, these devices
produce speech output. Necessarily, the voice of such a
system does not resemble in any way the voice of the child
who uses the system. This project is for children who have
at least some speech capability, such as saying a few isolated
words. The investigator will develop technology that performs
a voice transplant of the child's natural voice onto the
AAC device, so that the device's voice will sound like the
child. The investigator hypothesizes that an AAC device
with a personalized voice that mimics the child's voice
will psychologically reinforce powerful motivational factors
and a sense of owness for communication so that the frequency
and richness of AAC use, and its acceptance by family members
and friends, will be enhanced. In addition, as a tool for
improving a child's speech capabilities, a system that speaks
with a voice similar to the child's own voice is likely
to be more effective than a system that speaks with a default
synthetic voice because the computer provides a model that
is closer to the child's speech and hence is easier to emulate
by the child. To create the system, the investigator will
build on the most recent voice transformation, speech synthesis,
and other speech technologies that have been developed in
his lab.
Jan van Santen
The Regents of the University of California, Irvine, CA
2008
Principal Investigator: Michael Leon, Ph.D. and Ira Lott, M.D.
Olfactory and Other Novel Treatments for Autism
Autism is a severe developmental disorder, involving profound deficits
in communication, social interactions and repetitive/compulsive
behaviors. While there is increasing adoption of early interventions
for the treatment of autism, these therapies require an
extraordinary commitment of time and money, with only varying
degrees of success. This project takes advantage of recent
findings in the animal literature demonstrating that early
sensory and motor stimulation allows brains to become much
more resistant to neurological challenges, thereby preserving
neurobehavioral function in the face of genetic, toxic and
physical insults to the brain. In preliminary work, the
investigator considered the possibility that humans challenged
by autism would have similar gains in functionality with
a specific type of increased sensory stimulation. There
is now data showing that thirty-one of thirty-one autistic
individuals given this form of sensory stimulation experienced
measurable and significant improvements over a wide range
of their symptoms, including the critical issue of communication.
Through this grant, the investigator will test this treatment
systematically with a randomized controlled trial. The sole
aim of this project is to assess the efficacy of this treatment
using a randomized controlled trial for 8-10 year-old autistic
individuals, with a follow-up period to assess the ongoing
efficacy of the treatment. If the therapy proves to be effective, it should be possible to treat autistic children reliably
and effectively at a minimal expense.
Michael Leon
Syracuse University, Facilitated Communication Institute,
Syracuse , NY
1997-2008
Principal Investigator: Douglas Biklen, Ph.D.
Grant 1: Core Funding
Grant 2: Strategic Planning Grant for the Facilitated Communication Institute
Grant 3: Autobiographical Accounts of People with Autism
Grant 4: Lurie Scholarship Fund
The NLM Family Foundation has supported the Facilitated Communication Institute for several years. Through the Core Funding Grant, the Strategic Planning Grant and the Lurie Scholarship Fund, the NLM Family Foundation supports the FC Institute's activities in facilitated communication training, documentation and demonstration, and reinitiates a strategic planning process to better focus the Institute for the next 5-10 years of work in the field of autism and inclusion.
The NLM Family Foundation
also provided a grant to Dr. Biklen to support his work
in collecting autobiographical accounts from people with
autism who had been previously considered low functioning
but now communicate fluently and some even independently
with use of FC. Dr. Biklen has written a book of autobiographical
accounts of seven individuals with autism published in 2005,
entitled Autism and the Myth of the Person Alone .
Click here to read the NLMFF Interview with Dr. Biklen
Facilitated Communication Institute
Doug Biklen
University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
2008
Principal Investigator: Jose Alcantara, Ph.D. and Christian Fullgrabe, Ph.D.
Psychophysical and Speech Perception Studies in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders
One
of the remarkable properties of speech perception is its
high resilience to the corrupting influences of background
sounds. Everyday experience tells us that, even in noisy
acoustic environments, we are able to understand speech,
with little or no effort on our part. It appears that the
human auditory system has developed useful strategies or
mechanisms to optimize the saliency of the speech signal.
Some of these mechanisms involve processing that occurs
at very low levels of the auditory system, including the
hearing end organ - the cochlea. Others occur at higher
levels, up to and including the auditory cortex, and beyond.
However, it is clear that the low-level processing stages
are important, particularly for our perception of loudness,
and the detection of speech in noise. Individuals with autism
appear to react aversively to sounds, and have difficulty
understanding speech when there are competing sounds present.
Currently, we are not certain whether these symptoms are
due to alterations in low- or high-level auditory processing.
However, the evidence for the former is compelling, although
we do not as yet know the nature of the underlying mechanisms
responsible for the observed speech-in-noise deficits and
atypical loudness perception. This project involves a series
of behavioral and objective studies of auditory perception
using both simple and complex stimuli to identify those
mechanisms responsible for the perceptual difficulties experienced
by individuals with autism. The results of the project have
the potential to lead to the development of new screening
tools for auditory sensitivity in autism, which will be
important not only for improved clinical diagnosis, but
also for the use in epidemiological and genetic research
into autism, and may also help in the design of digital
speech processing algorithms to compensate for auditory
processing abnormalities.
University
of Cambridge, Laboratory for Research into Autism
University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy
2008
Principal Investigator: Maria Palmieri, MD and Maurizio Elia, MD
Mirror Neuron System and Written Communication through Facilitated
Communication in People with Autism: A Cortical Profile
of Excitability and Inhibition by Means of Transcranial
Magnetic Stimulation
There are several studies that link Mirror Neurons (MN) to language
and other studies describe a possible malfunction of the
Mirror Neuron System (MNS) in people with autism. However,
some people with autism use pointing and typing (FC) as
an alternative to verbal language. This project is driven
by the hypothesis that FC might activate the MNS, helping
the person with autism to communicate. The aim is to investigate
this hypothesis by means of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
(TMS), a non-invasive technique widely used to test neuromotor
activation. TMS is able to explore some brain circuits in
humans, and TMS experiments in non-autistic people have
demonstrated an activation of some brain areas while reading
and speaking. This project will investigate whether the
same is true for children with autism and no verbal language
who have learned to read and write. If this is true, it
would demonstrate that pointing with the objective of typing
is an intentional movement. The study assumes that reading
and writing, learned by FC, have created a common code between
the two people who communicate which allows them to understand
each other. Twenty non-speaking people with autism and twenty
non-autistic people will participate in this year-long study.
Selected subjects will undergo a clinical and neuropsychological
assessment. After identifying participants, the investigator
will test her hypothesis using TMS recording to prove that
the typing on a keyboard of autistic FC users is intentional
(i.e. independent from facilitator). If able to demonstrate
this, the investigator will show that either MNS works in
people with autism or that it has been activated as a result
of training by means of FC and AAC strategies.
University
of Rome Tor Vergata
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
2008
Principal Investigator: Maja Mataric, Ph.D.
Socially Assistive Robotics for Socialization and Communication Training
in Children with Autism
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been shown to respond
socially to simple robots. While interest in and engagement
with machines has been reliably observed, it remains to
be validated whether such interactions can lead toward improvements
in the child's communication and social skill training.
The goal of this study is to test and validate the possibility
of transference of communication and social skills between
robots and children with autism toward family, peers, and
others.
This study brings together experts in ASD, social behavior,
and intelligent socially assistive robotics. Their combined
expertise and resources will be brought to bear, in a principled
hypothesis-testing approach, not to develop new technology,
but to study ways in which existing technology can be applied
for effective therapeutic use. Through the involvement of
the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange and Children's Hospital
of Los Angeles , children across the ASD spectrum will participate
in the study.
The child-robot interactions begin as simple scenarios,
and gradually increase in complexity in a child-specific,
individualized manner. They will involve social and communication
skills such as pointing, the use of personal pronouns, and
joint attention, imitation, turn-taking, and vocal communication.
The study will involve family members and peers, testing
how child-robot communication and social interaction can
be transferred to child-robot-peer and, eventually, toward
child-peer communication and interaction. Different robot
forms will be tested, from simple car-like platforms to
more complex but affordable human-like machines. The results
of child-robot interactions will be compared to interactions
with computers, caretakers, and peers, to identify the potential
role and effectiveness of robots as therapeutic tools for
children with autism.
Maja Mataric
University of Wisconsin- Madison, Madison, WI
2008
Principal Investigator: Morton Gernsbacher, Ph.D. and Hill Goldsmith, Ph.D.
The Neuroanatomical Origin of Severe Speech Impairment in Autism
Autistic individuals' delay and, for some, continued impairment in
speech are typically ascribed to intellectual impairments
or social affiliation deficits. Indeed, autistic individuals
whose speech does not develop to fluency are often referred
to as “low functioning,” and are sure to be disadvantaged
on many measures of intelligence. However, when assessed
without demand on speech production, minimally fluent autistic
individuals excel on the pre-eminent test of fluid intelligence.
Similarly, although theoretical speculations continue to
misperceive autism as an attachment disorder, all empirical
studies demonstrate that autistic individuals are as securely
attached to their primary caregivers as their peers.
In contrast to socio-emotional or intellectual attributions
for autistic individuals' severe speech impairment, the
research of Gernsbacher and colleagues has implicated oral-
and manual-motor development. It should be noted that language
is the mental representation of concepts, whereas speech
is literally the articulation of language. Speaking fluently
requires “an intricate orchestration” of oral-motor mechanisms.
The prominent associations among oral- and manual-motor
skills and speech fluency which Gernsbacher and colleagues
have documented in previous research, bear striking implications
for appreciating communication impairment in autism. For
instance, these associations challenge the common assumption
that manual modes of communication, including those that
require keyboarding, are available to autistic individuals
— if simply they choose to use them.
This project is motivated by two important findings: (1)
a neuroanatomical marker of individuals with speech impairment,
and (2) a manual-motor behavioral marker of individuals
with severe speech impairment that could be related to the
neuroanatomical marker. Therefore, the purpose of the project
is to explore the inter-relations among speech fluency,
neuroanatomical structure, and manual dominance.
Laboratory
of Morton Ann Gernsbacher
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