Assessing and targeting eye avoidance in autism spectrum disorders: The development of a novel neural marker and the evaluation of promising biomedical intervention techniques.

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are an early-onset group of neurodevelopmental disorders that are characterized by impairments in social communication and interaction, including difficulties using eye contact and processing the body language and mental states of others. Among different social cues, eye contact forms a highly salient and powerful signal for mediating human social interaction. Related to the difficulties that individuals with ASD experience with engaging direct eye contact, the present project aims to investigate eye avoidance in ASD from a neurophysiological perspective using the non-invasive transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) technique. Using this neurophysiological approach, we already established that in neurotypicals direct eye contact can induce ‘approach’ behavior (study 1). Particularly, visuo-motor information originating from the person with whom direct eye contact is established is more readily to be processed in the observer’s motor system, compared to signals from persons with whom no direct eye contact is established. With the current project, we aim to use this neural marker to assess whether direct eye gaze can elicit neural ‘avoidance’ in patients with ASD (study 2). Finally, we aim to investigate whether neural approach/avoidance tendencies towards direct eye contact can be modulated using interventions based on oxcytocin (study 3) or neuromodulating techniques such as tDCS non-invasive brain stimulation (study 4)).