Projects

Due to the considerable heterogeneity in the expression and severity of the core and associated symptoms and in the aetiology of ASD, determining behavioural phenotypes for precise diagnosis in all age groups is still a challenge for the clinician. Furthermore, diagnostic decisions are complicated by the high incidence of comorbidities frequently associated with ASD. Unfortunately, these comorbid disorders, as well as differential diagnoses, share similarities with ASD. Accordingly, diagnosing ASD is a time- and cost-intensive procedure that needs expert clinicians to assess behavioural, historical, and parent- or third-party-report informationto make a reliable and valid diagnosis. Therefore, the project pursues two main goals: (1) the implementation of the screening instrument and training tool for the early detection of ASD in different age and IQ ranges, specific to males and females, and the transfer into the health care sector; (2) the improvement of reliability and validity of clinical diagnoses of ASD in Germany. The internet-based training tool for valid application of the screening instrument, developed in
P1a and
P1b will be implemented in psychiatric day-to-day assessment and will be transferred into the primary care sector by extension to paediatricians, general practitioners, and other gatekeepers for referral to specialized services. For quality management purposes, two annual case conferences with all project partners will be held to discuss diagnostic issues and thus maintain diagnostic validity. Altogether, P1a, P1b and P2 will facilitate the earliest and most effective access for concerned individuals to specialized procedures and subsequent therapeutic interventions.

Workpackage WP 04 will develop the procedure by which the human participants will be recruited and characterised on a cognitive, behavioural and clinical level. This WP will provide rationale for the target population (14 year old adolescents) and the methods necessary to successfully recruit young people to participate in the research. This WP also works closely with an SME (Delosis) to develop a new web-based system of collecting confidential cognitive and behavioural information from youth and their parents. Cognitive measures were selected to closely overlap with neuropsychological processes measured in WP 06 and WP 04 and reward-related brain processes in the animal research WP 03. This workpackage will also provide an assessment of cognitive and behavioural processes under different experimental conditions to further elaborate on the role of reward-related mechanisms in more complex psychological processes. It will provide a comprehensive assessment of youth psychosocial functioning and psychiatric symptoms and the progression toward greater behavioural and emotional problems at later stages of adolescence. Such a comprehensive battery will enable us to associate both genes and brain structure/function to behavioural and psychiatric profile. Finally, assessment of family environment and parental psychopathology and substance use will allow us to investigate gene-environment interaction at the level of both brain and behaviour. Specific objectives: 1. Develop an assessment battery to provide a comprehensive cognitive, behavioural, psychiatric and environmental characterisation of each adolescent participant. 2. Assure that all assessment procedures are piloted and validated for use in English, French and Germanspeaking adolescent populations. 3. Develop a manual-based standard operating procedure for recruitment of participants and assessment of participants at two time points (at age 14 and ages 15-17) (in collaboration with SME NNL). 4. Development of educational programmes to implement operating procedures for recruitment and clinical assessment of subjects Europewide. 5. Recruitment and behavioural/clinical characterisation of 2000 adolescent subjects. 6. Complete follow-up assessments in year 4 on all 2000 adolescent subjects.