# Disrupted eye gaze perception as a biobehavioral marker of social dysfunction: An RDoC investigation

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR · 2020 · $591,003

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
Social dysfunction is an intractable problem in a wide spectrum of psychiatric illnesses, undermining patients’
capacities for employment, independent living, and maintaining meaningful relationships. Identifying common
markers of social impairment across disorders and understanding their mechanisms are prerequisites to
developing targeted neurobiological treatments that can be applied productively across diagnoses and illness
stages to improve functional outcome. This project focuses on eye gaze perception, the ability to accurately
and efficiently discriminate others’ gaze direction, as a potential biomarker of social functioning that cuts across
psychiatric diagnoses. This premise builds on both the monkey and human literatures showing gaze perception
as a basic building block supporting higher-level social communication and social development, and reports of
abnormal gaze perception in multiple psychiatric conditions accompanied by prominent social dysfunction
(e.g., psychosis-spectrum disorders, autism-spectrum disorders, social phobia). A large sample (n= 225) of
adolescent and young adult (age 14-30) psychiatric patients (regardless of diagnosis) with various degrees of
impaired social functioning, and 75 demographically matched healthy controls will be recruited for this study.
Participant’s psychiatric phenotypes, cognition, social cognition, and community functioning will be
dimensionally characterized. Eye gaze perception will be assessed using a psychophysical task, and two
metrics (precision, self-referential bias) that respectively tap into gaze perception disturbances at the visual
perceptual and interpretation levels, independent of general deficits, will be derived using Bayesian modeling.
A subset of the participants (150 psychiatric patients, 75 healthy controls) will additionally undergo multimodal
fMRI to determine the functional and structural brain network features of altered gaze perception. The specific
aims of this project are three fold: Aim 1) Determine the generality of gaze perception disturbances in
psychiatric patients with prominent social dysfunction; 2) Map behavioral indices of gaze perception
disturbances to dimensions of psychiatric phenotypes and core functional domains; and 3) Identify the neural
correlates of altered gaze perception in psychiatric patients with social dysfunction. Successfully completing
these specific aims will identify the specific basic deficits, clinical profile, and underlying neural circuits
associated with social dysfunction that can be used to guide targeted, personalized treatments, thus advancing
NIMH’s Strategic Objective 1 (describe neural circuits associated with mental illnesses and map the
connectomes for mental illnesses) and Objective 3 (develop new treatments based on discoveries in
neuroscience and behavioral science).

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9939991
- **Project number:** 1R01MH122491-01
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN AT ANN ARBOR
- **Principal Investigator:** Ivy Fei Tso
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $591,003
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-05-01 → 2025-03-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9939991

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9939991, Disrupted eye gaze perception as a biobehavioral marker of social dysfunction: An RDoC investigation (1R01MH122491-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9939991. Licensed CC0.

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