Adult autism

Attentional reorienting is dysfunctional not only in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but also in infants who will develop ASD, thus constituting a potential causal factor of future social interaction and communication abilities. Following the research domain criteria framework, we hypothesized that the presence of subclinical autistic traits in parents should lead to atypical infants' attentional reorienting, which in turn should impact on their future socio-communication behavior in toddlerhood...

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience pervasive difficulties in processing social information from faces. However, the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying social trait judgments of faces in ASD remain largely unclear. Here, we comprehensively addressed this question by employing functional neuroimaging and parametrically generated faces that vary in facial trustworthiness and dominance. Behaviorally, participants with ASD exhibited reduced specificity but increased inter-rater variability in social trait judgments...

Adolescence has been characterized as a period of risky and possibly suboptimal decision-making, yet the development of decision-making in autistic adolescents is not well understood. To investigate decision-making in autism, we evaluated performance on 2 computerized tasks capturing decision-making under explicit risk and uncertainty in autistic and non-autistic adolescents/young adults ages 12-22 years. Participants completed the Game of Dice Task (32 IQ-matched participant pairs) to assess decision-making under explicit risk and the modified Iowa Gambling Task (35 IQ-matched pairs) to assess decision-making under uncertainty...

Autism is characterized by atypical social communication styles. To investigate whether individuals with high autistic traits could still have effective social communication among each other, we compared the behavioral patterns and communication quality within 64 dyads of college students paired with both high, both low, and mixed high-low (HL) autistic traits, with their gender matched. Results revealed that the high-high (HH) autistic dyads exhibited atypical behavioral patterns during conversations, including reduced mutual gaze, communicational turns, and emotional sharing compared with the low-low and/or HL autistic dyads...

Noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been increasingly investigated during the last decade as a treatment option for persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Yet, previous studies did not reach a consensus on a superior treatment protocol or stimulation target. Persons with ASD often suffer from social isolation and high rates of unemployment, arising from difficulties in social interaction. ASD involves multiple neural systems involved in perception, language, and cognition, and the underlying brain networks of these functional domains have been well documented...

Previous studies in autism spectrum disorder demonstrated an increased number of excitatory pyramidal cells and a decreased number of inhibitory parvalbumin+ chandelier interneurons in the prefrontal cortex of postmortem brains. How these changes in cellular composition affect the overall abundance of excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the cortex is not known. Herein, we quantified the number of excitatory and inhibitory synapses in the prefrontal cortex of 10 postmortem autism spectrum disorder brains and 10 control cases...

Associations between maternal immune dysregulation (including autoimmunity and skewed cytokine/chemokine profiles) and offspring neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism have been reported. In maternal autoantibody-related autism, specific maternally derived autoantibodies can access the fetal compartment to target eight proteins critical for neurodevelopment. We examined the relationship between maternal autoantibodies to the eight maternal autoantibody-related autism proteins and cytokine/chemokine profiles in the second trimester of pregnancy in mothers of children later diagnosed with autism and their neonates' cytokine/chemokine profiles...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disorder with a rising prevalence and unknown etiology presenting with deficits in cognition and abnormal behavior. We hypothesized that the investigation of the synaptic component of prefrontal cortex may provide proteomic signatures that may identify the biological underpinnings of cognitive deficits in childhood ASD. Subcellular fractions of synaptosomes from prefrontal cortices of age-, brain area-, and postmortem-interval-matched samples from children and adults with idiopathic ASD vs...

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Avoidant and Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (CBT-AR; ARIFD) is a psychological treatment that targets many of the core symptoms of ARFID. Although a growing literature supports the efficacy of behavioural interventions for paediatric feeding and eating disorders, including ARFID, the applicability of these methods to adults remains undetermined. Telehealth delivery of CBT-AR in adults with autism has yet to be tested. With this study, we conduct a preliminary evaluation of CBT-AR delivered virtually to a 26-year-old white British female, with mixed ARFID and elevated autistic traits...

A scoping review on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and its impact on the families of affected children was undertaken due to insufficient information available on the diverse experiences impacting their lives. Using the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology, eligibility criteria were guided by Population (families), Concept (family experiences), and Context (African region). English-language articles were sought from a variety of databases and search engines. The publication date of the identified articles ranged from 2003 to 2021 with most published in 2020 (n = 10), and the majority using qualitative methodologies (n = 51)...

INTRODUCTION: Autistic individuals demonstrate greater variability and timing error in their motor performance than neurotypical individuals, likely due at least in part to atypical cerebellar characteristics and connectivity. These motor difficulties may differentially affect discrete as opposed to continuous movements in autistic individuals. Augmented auditory feedback has the potential to aid motor timing and variability due to intact auditory-motor pathways in autism and high sensitivity in autistic individuals to auditory stimuli...

BACKGROUND: Roughly more than one in six adults worldwide suffer from psychiatric conditions. Sporadic studies have associated parental psychiatric disorders with autism spectrum disorder in offspring. Comprehensively examining the association between parental psychiatric disorders and offspring autism spectrum disorder is needed to guide health policies, and to inform etiologic studies. METHODS: We included all children born in Sweden and Finland 1997-2016. Diagnoses were clinically ascertained from National Registers through 2017...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the social difficulties and health care needs of adult Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) patients in Japan, as well as the financial and physical stress experienced by their caregivers. This study aimed to clarify the social circumstances surrounding adult DMD patients and assess the degree of involvement of family members in their care and the associated economic burden of the disorder in Japan. METHODS: Adult DMD patients were identified through the Registry of Muscular Dystrophy (Remudy) in Japan and invited to complete a questionnaire together with a caregiver...

BACKGROUND: A quarter of People with Intellectual Disabilities (PwID) have epilepsy compared with 1% of the general population. Epilepsy in PwID is a bellwether for premature mortality, multimorbidity and polypharmacy. This group depends on their care provider to give relevant information for management, especially epilepsy. There is no research on care status relationship and clinical characteristics of PwID and epilepsy. AIM: Explore and compare the clinical characteristics of PwID with epilepsy across different care settings...

The relationship between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and sexual offending (SO) is an overlooked issue, both in clinical practice and in research. Based on a pre-specified protocol (PROSPERO: CRD42024501598), we systematically searched Pubmed and Scopus, between January 1st , 1994 and January 12th , 2024, for articles related to SO in ASD. Study quality was assessed with study design-specific tools (Study Quality Assessment Tools, NHLBI, NIH). We found 19 relevant publications (five cross-sectional studies, two case-control studies, and 12 case reports)...

Interpersonal touch plays a crucial role in shaping relationships and encouraging social connections. Failure in processing tactile input or abnormal tactile sensitivity may hamper social behaviors and have severe consequences in individuals' relational lives. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by both sensory disruptions and social impairments, making affective touch an ideal meeting point for understanding these features in ASD individuals. By integrating behavioral and physiological measures, we investigated the effects of affective touch on adult individuals with ASD from both an implicit and explicit perspective...

Subjective wellbeing (SWB) represents an individual's perception of wellness that is supported by homeostatic mechanisms. These mechanisms are proposed to be maintained by low negative affect and high positive affect, although less is known about these mechanisms and SWB in autism. The current cross-sectional study aimed to compare patterns of positive affect, negative affect (Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale), and SWB (Personal Wellbeing Index-School Children) between autistic (n = 53) and non-autistic (n = 49) individuals aged 10-22 years (Mage  = 13...

Autistic individuals experience high rates of behavioral crises that present to healthcare providers for medication management. Co-occurring psychiatric conditions and psychotropic medication use are common among this patient population. Particularly for those with limited expressive language, evaluating for the presence of psychiatric and medical conditions that could contribute to distress is a critical component of crisis management. A records review study was completed on 126 autistic individuals for whom medical decision-making support was requested from The Huntsman Mental Health Institute Neurobehavior Consultation Service...

BACKGROUND: Autistic features and sensory processing difficulties and their phenotypic co-expression with alexithymia share a transdiagnostic vulnerability. In this work, we explored whether the current concept of broad autism phenotype rather translates altered sensory processing (non-specific to autism), meaning that the characteristics of altered sensory processing should be overexpressed among individuals with heightened vulnerability to sensory processing atypicalities (parents of children with sensorial processing disorder, or SPD parents) and individuals with heightened vulnerability to autistic traits (parents of children with autism spectrum disorders, or ASD parents)...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare antipsychotic use by youth with intellectual/developmental disabilities to youth without IDD as they transitioned from pediatric to adult health care services. In addition, antipsychotic use was compared between youth with different types of IDD (autism, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Down syndrome and 'other'). METHODS: Population level administrative health data was used to compare the dispensing of antipsychotics for youth aged 15 to 24 years with and without IDD, between 2010 and 2019...