1. Corbett BA, Carmean V, Ravizza S, Wendelken C, Henry ML, Carter C, Rivera SM. {{A functional and structural study of emotion and face processing in children with autism}}. {Psychiatry Res};2009 (Aug 7)
Children with autism exhibit impairment in the processing of socioemotional information. The amygdala, a core structure centrally involved in socioemotional functioning, has been implicated in the neuropathology of autism. We collected structural and functional magnetic resonance images (MRI) in children 8 to 12 years of age with high-functioning autism (n=12) and typical development (n=15). The functional MRI experiment involved matching facial expressions and people. Volumetric analysis of the amygdala was also performed. The results showed that children with autism exhibited intact emotion matching, while showing diminished activation of the fusiform gyrus (FG) and the amygdala. Conversely, the autism group showed deficits in person matching amidst some FG and variable amygdala activation. No significant between-group differences in the volume of the left or right amygdala were found. There were associations between age, social anxiety and amygdala volume in the children with autism such that smaller volumes were generally associated with more anxiety and younger age. In summary, the data are consistent with abnormalities in circuits involved in emotion and face processing reported in studies of older subjects with autism showing reductions in amygdala activation related to emotion processing and reduced fusiform activation involved in face processing.
2. Couture SM, Penn DL, Losh M, Adolphs R, Hurley R, Piven J. {{Comparison of social cognitive functioning in schizophrenia and high functioning autism: more convergence than divergence}}. {Psychol Med};2009 (Aug 12):1-11.
BACKGROUND: Individuals with schizophrenia and individuals with high-functioning autism (HFA) seem to share some social, behavioral and biological features. Although marked impairments in social cognition have been documented in both groups, little empirical work has compared the social cognitive functioning of these two clinical groups.MethodForty-four individuals with schizophrenia, 36 with HFA and 41 non-clinical controls completed a battery of social cognitive measures that have been linked previously to specific brain regions. RESULTS: The results indicate that the individuals with schizophrenia and HFA were both impaired on a variety of social cognitive tasks relative to the non-clinical controls, but did not differ from one another. When individuals with schizophrenia were divided into negative symptom and paranoid subgroups, exploratory analyses revealed that individuals with HFA may be more similar, in terms of the pattern of social cognition impairments, to the negative symptom group than to the paranoia group. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide further support for similarities in social cognition deficits between HFA and schizophrenia, which have a variety of implications for future work on gene-brain-behavior relationships.
3. Enstrom AM, Onore CE, Water JA, Ashwood P. {{Differential monocyte responses to TLR ligands in children with autism spectrum disorders}}. {Brain Behav Immun};2009 (Aug 7)
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterized by impairment in social interactions, communication deficits, and restricted repetitive interests and behaviors. Recent evidence has suggested that impairments of innate immunity may play an important role in ASD. To test this hypothesis, we isolated peripheral blood monocytes from 17 children with ASD and 16 age-matched typically developing (TD) controls and stimulated these cell cultures in vitro with distinct toll-like receptors (TLR) ligands: TLR2 (lipoteichoic acid; LTA), TLR3 (poly I:C), TLR4 (lipopolysaccharide; LPS), TLR5 (flagellin) and TLR9 (CpG-B). Supernatants were harvested from the cell cultures and pro-inflammatory cytokine responses for IL-1beta, IL-6, IL-8, TNFalpha, MCP-1, and GM-CSF were determined by multiplex Luminex analysis. After in vitro challenge with TLR ligands, differential cytokine responses were observed in monocyte cultures from children with ASD compared with TD control children. In particular, there was a marked increase in pro-inflammatory IL-1beta, IL-6 and TNFalpha responses following TLR2, and IL-1beta response following TLR4 stimulation in monocyte cultures from children with ASD (p<0.04). Conversely, following TLR9 stimulation there was a decrease in IL-1beta, IL-6, GM-CSF and TNFalpha responses in monocyte cell cultures from children with ASD compared with controls (p<0.05). These data indicate that, monocyte cultures from children with ASD are more responsive to signaling via select TLRs. As monocytes are key regulators of the immune response, dysfunction in the response of these cells could result in long-term immune alterations in children with ASD that may lead to the development of adverse neuroimmune interactions and could play a role in the pathophysiology observed in ASD.
4. Hamilton AF, Brindley R, Frith U. {{Visual perspective taking impairment in children with autistic spectrum disorder}}. {Cognition};2009 (Aug 12)
Evidence from typical development and neuroimaging studies suggests that level 2 visual perspective taking – the knowledge that different people may see the same thing differently at the same time – is a mentalising task. Thus, we would expect children with autism, who fail typical mentalising tasks like false belief, to perform poorly on level 2 visual perspective taking as well. However, prior data on this issue are inconclusive. We re-examined this question, testing a group of 23 young autistic children, aged around 8years with a verbal mental age of around 4years and three groups of typical children (n=60) ranging in age from 4 to 8years on a level 2 visual perspective task and a closely matched mental rotation task. The results demonstrate that autistic children have difficulty with visual perspective taking compared to a task requiring mental rotation, relative to typical children. Furthermore, performance on the level 2 visual perspective taking task correlated with theory of mind performance. These findings resolve discrepancies in previous studies of visual perspective taking in autism, and demonstrate that level 2 visual perspective taking is a mentalising task.
5. Hsu CL, Lin CY, Chen CL, Wang CM, Wong MK. {{The Effects of A Gluten and Casein-free Diet in Children with Autism: A Case Report}}. {Chang Gung Med J};2009 (Jul-Aug);32(4):459-465.
A boy with autism, growth and developmental retardation was brought to our clinic. He was diagnosed with CHARGE syndrome. Subsequently, various therapies were introduced when he was 5 months old yet the developmental delays persisted. Gastrointestinal problems such as frequent post-prandial vomiting and severe constipation were noted as well. At the age of 42 months, the boy was subjected to a gluten and casein-free diet. Soybean milk and rice were substituted for cow’s milk, bread and noodles. After 2.5 months, interpersonal relations including eye to eye contact and verbal communication improved. At 5.5 months the boy was capable of playing and sharing toys with his sibling and other children, behavior noted to be closer to that of an unaffected child. In addition, the decreased frequency of postprandial vomiting led to a significant increment in body weight, body height (from below the third percentile to the tenth percentile) and vitality after 11 months on the diet. In view of the lack of consensus on the benefits of dietary intervention in patients with autism, we are suggesting an adjuvant therapy that is simple, safe and economical. In addition, the therapy may be more feasible in Taiwan as opposed to western countries because of cultural factors such as dietary preference and product availability.
6. Klein-Tasman BP, Phillips KD, Lord C, Mervis CB, Gallo FJ. {{Overlap with the autism spectrum in young children with Williams syndrome}}. {J Dev Behav Pediatr};2009 (Aug);30(4):289-299.
7. Murphy P, Brady N, Fitzgerald M, Troje NF. {{No evidence for impaired perception of biological motion in adults with autistic spectrum disorders}}. {Neuropsychologia};2009 (Aug 8)
A central feature of autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs) is a difficulty in identifying and reading human expressions, including those present in the moving human form. One previous study, by Blake et al. (2003), reports decreased sensitivity for perceiving biological motion in children with autism, suggesting that perceptual anomalies underlie problems in social cognition. We revisited this issue using a novel psychophysical task. 16 adults with ASDs and 16 controls were asked to detect the direction of movement of human point-light walkers which were presented in both normal and spatially scrambled forms in a background of noise. Unlike convention direction discrimination tasks, in which walkers walk ‘on the spot’ while facing left or right, we added translatory motion to the stimulus so that the walkers physically moved across the screen. Therefore, while a cue of coherent, translatory motion was available in both the normal and scrambled walker forms, the normal walker alone contained information about the configuration and kinematics of the human body. There was a significant effect of walker type, with reduced response times and error when the normal walker was present. Most importantly, these improvements were the same for both participant groups, suggesting that people with ASDs do not have difficulty integrating local visual information into a global percept of the moving human form. The discrepancy between these and previous findings of impaired biological motion perception in ASDs are discussed with reference to differences in the age and diagnosis of the participants, and the nature of the task.
8. Stribling P, Rae J, Dickerson P. {{Using conversation analysis to explore the recurrence of a topic in the talk of a boy with an autism spectrum disorder}}. {Clin Linguist Phon};2009 (Aug);23(8):555-582.
Some higher functioning individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are reported to produce perseverative talk, especially around ‘special interests’. Topic perseveration is a form of pragmatic impairment captured in Prizant and Rydell’s (1993) continuum of unconventional verbal behaviour in autism. Although widely reported, there is little systematic empirical research into this phenomenon. This paper considers the utility of Conversation Analysis in developing knowledge in this area, drawing upon data involving a boy with an ASD interacting with a researcher and a mobile robot platform. Although a frequency analysis of the boy’s talk on a single topic may suggest that it is perseverative in nature, in a sequential analysis of both talk and non-spoken activities this study aims to show how these may be interactionally-embedded. It is suggested that, in considering the interactional salience of apparently perseverative talk, it can be useful to explore the participation framework in which the topic is revisited.
9. van Roekel E, Scholte RH, Didden R. {{Bullying Among Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders: Prevalence and Perception}}. {J Autism Dev Disord};2009 (Aug 8)
This study examined: (a) the prevalence of bullying and victimization among adolescents with ASD, (b) whether they correctly perceived bullying and victimization, and (c) whether Theory of Mind (ToM) and bullying involvement were related to this perception. Data were collected among 230 adolescents with ASD attending special education schools. We found prevalence rates of bullying and victimization between 6 and 46%, with teachers reporting significantly higher rates than peers. Furthermore, adolescents who scored high on teacher- and self-reported victimization were more likely to misinterpret non-bullying situations as bullying. The more often adolescents bullied, according to teachers and peers, and the less developed their ToM, the more they misinterpreted bullying situations as non-bullying. Implications for clinical practice are discussed.
10. Wu SH, Camarena V. {{MeCP2 function in the basolateral amygdala in Rett syndrome}}. {J Neurosci};2009 (Aug 12);29(32):9941-9942.
