Adam Hantman and colleagues plan to apply established behavioral training and characterization techniques, as well as neural recording and perturbation methods, to monitor neural activity across the cortico-cerebellar network in three established genetic mouse models of ASD. The central hypothesis of the project is that disrupted cortico-cerebellar communication underlies impairments in motor control and behavioral flexibility in ASD.

Sandeep Robert Datta and colleagues seek to understand how mutations in genes implicated in ASD influence the behavior of rats. To do so, they plan to take advantage of new machine learning-based tools to quantitatively dissect the behavior of ASD genetic rat models before and after social experience. The team’s hope is that understanding how ASD risk genes impact behavior will lead to a deeper understanding of the neural basis of ASD.

Atypical visual experience affects many individuals with autism, yet its neuronal underpinnings are poorly understood. In the current project, Davide Zoccolan plans to characterize the visual functions of an Scn2a knockout rat model of autism. The overall aim is to establish the functional relationship between possible alterations of cortical processing and visual perceptual anomalies in autism.