Electrophysiological Studies of Autism

Abnormalities of cortical connectivity have long been suspected to be responsible, at least in part, for the autism phenotype. Research to date has used a number of modalities, but none has the time resolution and the ability to detect physiologically important oscillations of EEG. We plan to record EEG on participants with and without autism during period of rest and during performance of basic motor, sensory and sensorimotor tasks. During post hoc analysis, we anticipate finding EEG evidence for local over-synchronization and distant (global) under-connectivity.