scholarly journals Sensory Abnormality and Quantitative Autism Traits in Children With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorder in an Epidemiological Population

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Jussila ◽  
M. Junttila ◽  
M. Kielinen ◽  
H. Ebeling ◽  
L. Joskitt ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
General Population ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Screening Questionnaire ◽  
Sensory Abnormalities ◽  
Autism Traits ◽  
Parental Questionnaire ◽  
Sensory Abnormality ◽  
Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire

Abstract Sensory abnormalities (SAs) are recognized features in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and a relationship between SAs and ASD traits is also suggested in general population. Our aims were to estimate the prevalence of SAs in three different settings, and to study the association between SAs and quantitative autism traits (QAT) using the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) and a parental questionnaire. In an epidemiological population of 8-year-old children (n = 4397), the prevalence of SAs was 8.3%, in an ASD sample (n = 28), 53.6%, and in a non-ASD sample (n = 4369), 8.0%, respectively. Tactile and auditory hypersensitivity predicted an ASD diagnosis. The ASSQ was able to differentiate children with and without SA. In conclusion, QAT level and SAs were associated in all study samples.

scholarly journals Exploring possible predictors and moderators of an executive function training for children with an autism spectrum disorder

Autism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 440-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marieke de Vries ◽  
Mathilde GE Verdam ◽  
Pier JM Prins ◽  
Ben A Schmand ◽  
Hilde M Geurts
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Reward Sensitivity ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Autism Traits ◽  
Moderating Factors ◽  
Flexibility Training ◽  
Executive Function Training

Previously, a total of 121 children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) performed an adaptive working memory (WM)-training, an adaptive flexibility-training, or a non-adaptive control (mock)-training. Despite overall improvement, there were minor differences between the adaptive and mock-training conditions. Moreover, dropout was relatively high (26%). In the current study we explored potential predicting and moderating factors to clarify these findings. The effects of intelligence, autism traits, WM, flexibility, reward sensitivity and Theory of Mind on dropout, improvement during training, and improvement in everyday executive functioning (EF), ASD-like behavior, and Quality of Life (QoL) were studied. None of the predictors influenced dropout or training improvement. However, 1) more pre-training autism traits related to less improvement in EF and QoL, and 2) higher reward sensitivity was related to more improvement in QoL and ASD-like behavior. These findings suggest that these EF-training procedures may be beneficial for children with fewer autism traits and higher reward sensitivity. However, the exploratory nature of the analyses warrant further research before applying the findings clinically.

scholarly journals Neural correlates of polygenic risk score for autism spectrum disorders in general population

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Budhachandra Khundrakpam ◽  
Uku Vainik ◽  
Jinnan Gong ◽  
Noor Al-Sharif ◽  
Neha Bhutani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
White Matter ◽  
General Population ◽  
Cortical Thickness ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Risk Scores ◽  
Polygenic Risk ◽  
Cortical Regions ◽  
White Matter Connectivity

Abstract Autism spectrum disorder is a highly prevalent and highly heritable neurodevelopmental condition, but studies have mostly taken traditional categorical diagnosis approach (yes/no for autism spectrum disorder). In contrast, an emerging notion suggests a continuum model of autism spectrum disorder with a normal distribution of autistic tendencies in the general population, where a full diagnosis is at the severe tail of the distribution. We set out to investigate such a viewpoint by investigating the interaction of polygenic risk scores for autism spectrum disorder and Age2 on neuroimaging measures (cortical thickness and white matter connectivity) in a general population (n = 391, with age ranging from 3 to 21 years from the Pediatric Imaging, Neurocognition and Genetics study). We observed that children with higher polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder exhibited greater cortical thickness for a large age span starting from 3 years up to ∼14 years in several cortical regions localized in bilateral precentral gyri and the left hemispheric postcentral gyrus and precuneus. In an independent case–control dataset from the Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange (n = 560), we observed a similar pattern: children with autism spectrum disorder exhibited greater cortical thickness starting from 6 years onwards till ∼14 years in wide-spread cortical regions including (the ones identified using the general population). We also observed statistically significant regional overlap between the two maps, suggesting that some of the cortical abnormalities associated with autism spectrum disorder overlapped with brain changes associated with genetic vulnerability for autism spectrum disorder in healthy individuals. Lastly, we observed that white matter connectivity between the frontal and parietal regions showed significant association with polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder, indicating that not only the brain structure, but the white matter connectivity might also show a predisposition for the risk of autism spectrum disorder. Our findings showed that the fronto-parietal thickness and connectivity are dimensionally related to genetic risk for autism spectrum disorder in general population and are also part of the cortical abnormalities associated with autism spectrum disorder. This highlights the necessity of considering continuum models in studying the aetiology of autism spectrum disorder using polygenic risk scores and multimodal neuroimaging.

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