NCT06144775

A Kinematic Analysis of Motor Planning and Movement Execution of Children With Autism Spectrum Condition

Status unknown Last updated 22 November 2023

What this trial tests

trial testing Kinematics measures in Autism in 60 participants. Status unknown.

Timeline

1 October 2022

Primary endpoint
1 October 2024

31 March 2025

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Istituto per la Ricerca e l'Innovazione Biomedica
Status	Status unknown
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Enrollment	60
Start date	1 October 2022
Primary completion	1 October 2024
Estimated completion	31 March 2025
Sites	1 location across Italy

Drugs / interventions tested

• Kinematics measures

Conditions studied

• Autism — all drugs for Autism →
• Autism Spectrum Disorder — all drugs for Autism Spectrum Disorder →

Sponsor

Istituto per la Ricerca e l'Innovazione Biomedica — full company profile →

Who can join

Adults 7 to 13, any sex, with Autism or Autism Spectrum Disorder. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Autism Spectrum Condition (ASC) is a behavioral syndrome characterized by a severe organizational disorder of thinking and major functions that regulate human adaptation. It is to be considered as a functional disorder, or of executive functions, whose dysfunction is expressed in the difficulty of making voluntary movements, sequentially coordinated with each other according to a purpose, and of initiating an action, planning and monitoring it by inhibiting inappropriate responses such as gesture perseveration. Literature studies suggest that, compared to children with typical development (TD) and regardless of cognitive status, children with ASC have pervasive motor dysfunction that results in universal difficulties in several aspects of motor function, including - (1) fine motricity, (2) some aspects of praxis while performing tasks based on imitation of sequences, (3) simultaneous coordination of both sides of the body during rhythmic tasks of the upper limbs, and́ (4) interpersonal coordination and synchrony. The hypothesis of the study is that by comparing these aspects in 2 groups of children with ASC and children with TD using A.I. systems, it will be possible to extract objective markers of motor deficits found in autism, facilitating the validation of measurements acquired with clinical scales. The objective of the study is to investigate the characteristics of manual motor planning and performance difficulties in children with ASC using kinematic measurements. 30 ASC children with medium-high functioning and 30 TD children, aged 7 to 13 years, IQ \> 80, in the absence of motor deficits due to another clinical condition, will be recruited. The protocol will take place in a single session during which children will be video-recorded performing simple and complex rhythmic upper limb actions with a social partner. The presence of characteristic fine motor behaviors, practice errors, perseverations, movement variability, and interpersonal synchrony will be observed. The study will involve the use of 3 tasks contained in NEPSY-II: Finger tapping, Visual-motor precision, and Imitation of manual motor sequences. The videos will be recorded simultaneously and the different angles will allow hand kinematics to be extracted and analyzed with A.I. algorithms to measure displacement, velocity, acceleration, frequency and any other kinematic parameters highlighted. Thus, it is expected to identify objective markers of motor deficits found in children with ASC.

Publications & conference data

No peer-reviewed publications indexed yet for this trial.