The Gonzalez-Lima Laboratory at the University of Texas at Austin will be recruiting
participants for a study investigating whether transcranial infrared light stimulation,
or TILS, is beneficial for people diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
The molecular target of TILS is cytochrome c oxidase, a mitochondrial enzyme which is
crucial for oxygen utilization. People with ASD show impaired mitochondrial function
(Siddiqui, Elwell, and Johnson, 2016), as well as alterations in the prefrontal cortex
(Amaral, Schumann, and Nordahl, 2008), which plays a key neurological role in mediating
attention, impulse control, and social cognition functions.
The lab has previously shown that TILS, delivered to the prefrontal cortex, can be used
to improve cognitive functions such as attention (Barrett and Gonzalez-Lima, 2013),
executive function (Blanco, Maddox, and Gonzalez-Lima, 2017), and emotional regulation
(Zaizar, Papini, Gonzalez-Lima, and Telch, 2021). This cognitive enhancement from TILS is
accompanied by an increase in oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex (Holmes, Barrett,
Saucedo, O'Connor, Liu, and Gonzalez-Lima, 2019). Recently, the beneficial effects of
TILS on ASD symptoms have been safely explored in adults (Ceranoglu et al., 2022) and
children/adolescents (Pallanti et al., 2022).
The goal of the study is to recruit children, adolescents, and adults, either ASD or
non-ASD, for a study of the effects of repeated administration of TILS on autistic
behavior. Participants will be asked to give informed consent, complete a series of
questionnaires and cognitive tests, and wear a headband to non-invasively monitor brain
activity using near-infrared spectroscopy. TILS is administered non-invasively with a
headband device that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are cleared as safe for use
in humans by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but the device has not been approved
by the FDA for the specific investigational use in this research. The study will train
participants (or caregivers) on how to use the LED device, then send the participants
home to use the LED device. The investigators will contact participants once a week to
check progress. At the end of the study, participants return for the same assessments, at
which time the participants will return the LED device.
