Motor Impairments in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder: a Multimodal Approach

Clinical evaluation of participants by means of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Social Responsiveness Scale, Children Behavior Check List, Conners' Scale

The participants' motor skills are measured using the Movement Assessment Battery for Children 2 (MABC2) (Henderson et al., 2007), the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ) (Wilson et al., 2007), and the kinematic analysis of a reach-to-drop task (Forti et al., 2011; Crippa et al., 2015).Sensorimotor domain will be also further investigated with NEPSY-II (Korkman et al., 2007) (Fingertip Tapping, Imitating Hand Positions, Manual Motor Sequences, and Visuomotor Precision).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (structural MRI and DTI)

Either blood or saliva will be obtained for participants for DNA collection. DNA will be extracted in the Molecular Biology Laboratory at the Scientific Institute IRCCS Medea. Captured exome libraries will be sequenced using the Illumina NextSeq 500 in 100 bp paired end reads. Postsequencing reads will be aligned using BWA Enrichment application on BaseSpace. VCF file will be then marked using wANNOVAR (Wang Genomics Lab). The analysis will be focused on non-synonymous variants enrichment in Gene Ontology and Human Phenotype.