1. Cascio MA. {{Rigid Therapies, Rigid Minds: Italian Professionals’ Perspectives on Autism Interventions}}. {Cult Med Psychiatry};2015 (Mar 6)
Many therapies, interventions, and programs seek to improve outcomes and quality of life for people diagnosed with autism spectrum conditions. This paper addresses Italian professionals’ perspectives on a variety of such interventions, including TEACCH, ABA, Defeat Autism Now!, and Doman-Delacato. Drawing on participant-observation and interviews collected in 2012-2013 in a northern region of Italy, it highlights the theme of « rigidity » that appears in professionals’ discourses about both the characteristics of people with autism and the potential risks of adhering too strictly to any particular treatment protocol. The co-occurrence of the theme of rigidity across different domains demonstrates a way in which diagnostic characteristics become metaphors for medical practice. This paper proposes that such discursive moves may help bridge the gap between people with autism and people who work with them because a key attribute of people with autism-thinking and/or acting rigidly-is also a potential pitfall for people without autism.
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2. Ellegood J, Nakai N, Nakatani J, Henkelman M, Takumi T, Lerch J. {{Neuroanatomical Phenotypes Are Consistent With Autism-Like Behavioral Phenotypes in the 15q11-13 Duplication Mouse Model}}. {Autism Res};2015 (Mar 7)
Paternally and maternally inherited deletions and duplications of human chromosome 15q11-13 are relatively common in the human population. Furthermore, duplications in the 15q region are often associated with autism. Both maternal and paternal interstitial 15q11-13 duplication mouse models have been previously created, where several behavioral differences were found in the paternal duplication (patDp/+) mouse but not in the maternal duplication (matDp/+). These included decreased sociability, behavioral inflexibility, abnormal ultrasonic vocalizations, decreased spontaneous activity, and increased anxiety. Similarly, in the current study, we found several anatomical differences in the patDp/+ mice that were not seen in the matDp/+ mice. Regional differences that are evident only in the paternal duplication are a smaller dentate gyrus and smaller medial striatum. These differences may be responsible for the behavioral inflexibility. Furthermore, a smaller dorsal raphe nucleus could be responsible for the reported serotonin defects. This study highlights consistency that can be found between behavioral and anatomical phenotyping. Autism Res 2015. (c) 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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3. Flanagan T, Brodeur DA, Burack JA. {{A Point of Departure in the Comparison of Social and Nonsocial Visual Orienting Among Persons With Autism Spectrum Disorders}}. {Autism Res};2015 (Mar 7)
Endogenous visual orienting among children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and among typically developing (TD) children was examined using a Posner-type task that was modified to include social and nonsocial cues and targets to test hypotheses regarding information (social or nonsocial) and cue processing (long or short stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs)). The findings suggest intact endogenous orienting to face and mixed face targets using hand and arrow cues among children with ASDs who were matched to typically developing children (TDC) on the basis of nonverbal mental age (MA) at approximately 8.5 years. The findings from this study challenge the notions of a social orienting impairment and of mechanical social orienting as the children with ASDs in this study demonstrated strong orienting effects in all conditions and social sensitivity in the long stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) condition. Autism Res 2015. (c) 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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4. Horder J, Lavender T, Mendez MA, O’Gorman R, Daly E, Craig MC, Lythgoe DJ, Barker GJ, Murphy DG. {{Reduced subcortical glutamate/glutamine in adults with autism spectrum disorders: a [(1)H]MRS study}}. {Transl Psychiatry};2014;4:e364.
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5. Palmer CJ, Paton B, Kirkovski M, Enticott PG, Hohwy J. {{Context sensitivity in action decreases along the autism spectrum: a predictive processing perspective}}. {Proc Biol Sci};2015 (Mar 7);282(1802)
Recent predictive processing accounts of perception and action point towards a key challenge for the nervous system in dynamically optimizing the balance between incoming sensory information and existing expectations regarding the state of the environment. Here, we report differences in the influence of the preceding sensory context on motor function, varying with respect to both clinical and subclinical features of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Reach-to-grasp movements were recorded subsequent to an inactive period in which illusory ownership of a prosthetic limb was induced. We analysed the sub-components of reach trajectories derived using a minimum-jerk fitting procedure. Non-clinical adults low in autistic features showed disrupted movement execution following the illusion compared to a control condition. By contrast, individuals higher in autistic features (both those with ASD and non-clinical individuals high in autistic traits) showed reduced sensitivity to the presence of the illusion in their reaching movements while still exhibiting the typical perceptual effects of the illusion. Clinical individuals were distinct from non-clinical individuals scoring high in autistic features, however, in the early stages of movement. These results suggest that the influence of high-level representations of the environment differs between individuals, contributing to clinical and subclinical differences in motor performance that manifest in a contextual manner. As high-level representations of context help to explain fluctuations in sensory input over relatively longer time scales, more circumscribed sensitivity to prior or contextual information in autistic sensory processing could contribute more generally to reduced social comprehension, sensory impairments and a stronger desire for predictability and routine.
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6. Wise J. {{Genetic factors are « substantial » in aetiology of autism, study of UK twins finds}}. {BMJ};2015;350:h1212.
