1. Abu-Akel A, Apperly IA, Wood SJ, Hansen PC, Mevorach C. {{Autism Tendencies and Psychosis Proneness Interactively Modulate Saliency Cost}}. {Schizophrenia bulletin}. 2016 May 23.
Atypical responses to salient information are a candidate endophenotype for both autism and psychosis spectrum disorders. The present study investigated the costs and benefits of such atypicalities for saliency-based selection in a large cohort of neurotypical adults in whom both autism and psychosis expressions were assessed. Two experiments found that autism tendencies and psychosis proneness interactively modulated the cost incurred in the presence of a task-irrelevant salient distractor. Specifically, expressions of autism and psychosis had opposing effects on responses to salient information such that the benefits associated with high expressions for autism offset costs associated with high expressions for psychosis. The opposing influences observed on saliency cost may be driven by distinct attentional mechanisms that are differentially affected by expressions for autism and psychosis.
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2. Korhonen V, Werner S. {{Autistic traits and attention to speech: Evidence from typically developing individuals}}. {Logopedics, phoniatrics, vocology}. 2016 May 23:1-7.
Individuals with autism spectrum disorder have a preference for attending to non-speech stimuli over speech stimuli. We are interested in whether non-speech preference is only a feature of diagnosed individuals, and whether we can we test implicit preference experimentally. In typically developed individuals, serial recall is disrupted more by speech stimuli than by non-speech stimuli. Since behaviour of individuals with autistic traits resembles that of individuals with autism, we have used serial recall to test whether autistic traits influence task performance during irrelevant speech sounds. The errors made on the serial recall task during speech or non-speech sounds were counted as a measure of speech or non-speech preference in relation to no sound condition. We replicated the serial order effect and found the speech to be more disruptive than the non-speech sounds, but were unable to find any associations between the autism quotient scores and the non-speech sounds. Our results may indicate a learnt behavioural response to speech sounds.
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3. Ray B, Sokol DK, Maloney B, Lahiri DK. {{Finding novel distinctions between the sAPPalpha-mediated anabolic biochemical pathways in Autism Spectrum Disorder and Fragile X Syndrome plasma and brain tissue}}. {Scientific reports}. 2016;6:26052.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Fragile X syndrome (FXS) are developmental disorders. No validated blood-based biomarkers exist for either, which impedes bench-to-bedside approaches. Amyloid-beta (Abeta) precursor protein (APP) and metabolites are usually associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). APP cleavage by alpha-secretase produces potentially neurotrophic secreted APPalpha (sAPPalpha) and the P3 peptide fragment. beta-site APP cleaving enzyme (BACE1) cleavage produces secreted APPbeta (sAPPbeta) and intact Abeta. Excess Abeta is potentially neurotoxic and can lead to atrophy of brain regions such as amygdala in AD. By contrast, amygdala is enlarged in ASD but not FXS. We previously reported elevated levels of sAPPalpha in ASD and FXS vs. CONTROLS: We now report elevated plasma Abeta and total APP levels in FXS compared to both ASD and typically developing controls, and elevated levels of sAPPalpha in ASD and FXS vs. CONTROLS: By contrast, plasma and brain sAPPbeta and Abeta were lower in ASD vs. controls but elevated in FXS plasma vs. CONTROLS: We also detected age-dependent increase in an alpha-secretase in ASD brains. We report a novel mechanistic difference in APP pathways between ASD (processing) and FXS (expression) leading to distinct APP metabolite profiles in these two disorders. These novel, distinctive biochemical differences between ASD and FXS pave the way for blood-based biomarkers for ASD and FXS.
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4. Terzi A, Marinis T, Francis K. {{The Interface of Syntax with Pragmatics and Prosody in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders}}. {Journal of autism and developmental disorders}. 2016 May 21.
In order to study problems of individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) with morphosyntax, we investigated twenty high-functioning Greek-speaking children (mean age: 6;11) and twenty age- and language-matched typically developing children on environments that allow or forbid object clitics or their corresponding noun phrase. Children with ASD fell behind typically developing children in comprehending and producing simple clitics and producing noun phrases in focus structures. The two groups performed similarly in comprehending and producing clitics in clitic left dislocation and in producing noun phrases in non-focus structures. We argue that children with ASD have difficulties at the interface of (morpho)syntax with pragmatics and prosody, namely, distinguishing a discourse prominent element, and considering intonation relevant for a particular interpretation that excludes clitics.
