# The Role of the Motor System in Speech and Language in Autism

> **NIH NIH F31** · HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL · 2024 · $32,214

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition impacting 1 in 44 children that is diagnosed based on social
communication challenges and restrictive/repetitive behaviors, including repetitive motor movements. While
social communication differences in autistic individuals have been widely researched, motor skills, particularly
those related to speech production, remain understudied. This gap in the literature is surprising given the growing
evidence that motor differences are some of the earliest to emerge, are a clinically meaningful feature of autism
that underlie many core symptoms, and are correlated with both receptive and expressive language skills. A few
preliminary studies indicate that there are motor-based brain differences related to speech production and
language in autism. These results suggest that the motor act of speech production may play a key role in the
communication challenges observed in autism, however the brain and behavioral bases of speech motor profiles
are currently poorly characterized. We can advance understanding of the underlying speech production motor
differences, and related functional consequences, in autistic individuals through an improved characterization of
the speech motor system and speech and language behaviors. Here, I propose to test the hypothesis that
speech-motor brain regions are less engaged during speech production tasks in autistic compared to
neurotypical (NT) adults, and that this disengagement is related to overall motor, speech, and language skills. I
will recruit 30 NT adults and 45 autistic adults with diverse language profiles for an fMRI study paired with deep
speech behavioral phenotyping. In Aim 1, I will use a novel functional localizer to identify and characterize the
speech production network in each individual participant and compare the networks across groups. In Aim 2, I
will use these individual networks as regions of interest in which to examine brain activation during a language-
relevant speech production task, nonword repetition. As part of Aim 2, I will conduct deep speech and language
phenotyping of the autistic adults, in order to obtain comprehensive profiles of their communication skills. I will
then examine the relationship between the speech production activation during nonword repetition and each
participant’s speech, language, and motor profiles. These aims will produce a novel localizer to characterize the
speech production regions, elucidate speech-motor brain differences between NT and autistic adults, and
provide key insights into the relationship between speech production related motor regions and communication
in autism. Knowledge gained from this project will lead to a better understanding of role of the motor system in
communication in autism across diverse language phenotypes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10839798
- **Project number:** 5F31DC020864-02
- **Recipient organization:** HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
- **Principal Investigator:** Amanda O'Brien
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $32,214
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2023-07-01 → 2025-05-29

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10839798

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10839798, The Role of the Motor System in Speech and Language in Autism (5F31DC020864-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-04 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10839798. Licensed CC0.

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