The Child Psychiatry Department in the University Hospital of Tours (CHUT) has a long-standing expertise in the field of autism, in behavioral and neuropsychological assessments as well as in the domain of electrophysiological investigations. Patients, living anywhere in France or in the 'Region Centre-Val de Loire', are referred for diagnoses in the Center of Excellence for Autism (170 children/year, 130 adults/year) or are admitted for care, ensuring an efficient recruitment of patients for research projects. A research team (Team 'Autism' of the UMR Inserm U930 Imaging and Brain) is integrated into the Child Psychiatry Department and it shares a fully equipped lab with the clinical department (EEG, eyetracking, video), as well as the associated staff.

The research team is a multidisciplinary group made up of clinicians and scientists in different fields (child and adult psychiatrists, neurophysiologists, psychologists, linguists, ENT doctors) as well as technical staff. The purpose of the current research is to provide improvement in diagnosis and therapy for children and adults with autism via advancement in the understanding of the physiopathological mechanisms which underlie the observed symptoms, adopting a translational approach which includes both thorough clinical description and a large variety of neurophysiological explorations (EEG, ERP, Eye tracking, MRI, fMRI). This laboratory is the only one in France that has gathered expertise in clinical semiology, linguistics, neurophysiology, and therapeutics and has developed an integrated approach in the entire autism spectrum, from childhood to adulthood.