Inge-Marie Eigsti

Differential patterns of striatal activation in young children with and without ADHD

BACKGROUND Cognitive control, defined as the ability to suppress inappropriate thoughts and actions, is compromised in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). This study examines the neural basis of this deficit. METHODS We used a paradigm that incorporates a parametric manipulation within a go/nogo task, so that the number of go trials preceding a nogo trial is varied to tax the neural systems underlying cognitive control with increasing levels of interference. RESULTS Using this paradigm in combination with event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we show that children without ADHD have increased susceptibility to interference with increasing numbers of go trials preceding a nogo trial, but children with ADHD have difficulty even with a single go trial preceding a nogo trial. In addition, children with ADHD do not activate frontostriatal regions in the same manner as normally developing children, but rather rely on a more diffuse network of regions, including more posterior and dorsolateral prefrontal regions. CONCLUSIONS Normal immature cognition may be characterized as being susceptible to interference and supported by the maturation of frontostriatal circuitry. ADHD children show a slightly different cognitive profile at 6 to 10 years of age that is paralleled by a relative lack of or delay in the maturation of ventral frontostriatal circuitry.

Prolonged institutional rearing is associated with atypically large amygdala volume and difficulties in emotion regulation.

Early adversity, for example poor caregiving, can have profound effects on emotional development. Orphanage rearing, even in the best circumstances, lies outside of the bounds of a species-typical caregiving environment. The long-term effects of this early adversity on the neurobiological development associated with socio-emotional behaviors are not well understood. Seventy-eight children, who include those who have experienced orphanage care and a comparison group, were assessed. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) was used to measure volumes of whole brain and limbic structures (e.g. amygdala, hippocampus). Emotion regulation was assessed with an emotional go-nogo paradigm, and anxiety and internalizing behaviors were assessed using the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, the Child Behavior Checklist, and a structured clinical interview. Late adoption was associated with larger corrected amygdala volumes, poorer emotion regulation, and increased anxiety. Although more than 50% of the children who experienced orphanage rearing met criteria for a psychiatric disorder, with a third having an anxiety disorder, the group differences observed in amygdala volume were not driven by the presence of an anxiety disorder. The findings are consistent with previous reports describing negative effects of prolonged orphanage care on emotional behavior and with animal models that show long-term changes in the amygdala and emotional behavior following early postnatal stress. These changes in limbic circuitry may underlie residual emotional and social problems experienced by children who have been internationally adopted.

Eye movement of perceivers during audiovisualspeech perception

Perceiver eye movements were recorded during audiovisual presentations of extended monologues. Monologues were presented at different image sizes and with different levels of acoustic masking noise. Two clear targets of gaze fixation were identified, the eyes and the mouth. Regardless of image size, perceivers of both Japanese and English gazed more at the mouth as masking noise levels increased. However, even at thehighest noise levels and largest image sizes, subjects gazed at the mouth only about half the time. For the eye target, perceivers typically gazed at one eye more than the other, and the tendency became stronger at higher noise levels. English perceivers displayed more variety of gaze-sequence patterns (e.g., left eye to mouth to left eye to right eye) and persisted in using them at higher noise levels than did Japanese perceivers. No segment-level correlations were found between perceiver eye motions and phoneme identity of the stimuli.

Intervention for optimal outcome in children and adolescents with a history of autism.

Objective: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were once considered lifelong disorders, but recent findings indicate that some children with ASDs no longer meet diagnostic criteria for any ASD and reach normal cognitive function. These children are considered to have achieved “optimal outcomes” (OO). The present study aimed to retrospectively examine group differences in the intervention history of children and adolescents with OO and those with high-functioning autism (HFA). Method: The current study examined intervention histories in 25 individuals with OO and 34 individuals with HFA (current age, 8–21 years), who did not differ on age, sex, nonverbal intelligence, or family income. Intervention history was collected through detailed parent questionnaires. Results: Children in the OO group had earlier parental concern, received earlier referrals to specialists, and had earlier and more intensive intervention than those in the HFA group. Substantially more children with OO than HFA received applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy, although for children who received ABA, the intensity did not differ between the groups. Children in the HFA group were more likely to have received medication, especially antipsychotics and antidepressants. There were no group differences in the percent of children receiving special diets or supplements. Conclusion: These data suggest that OO individuals generally receive earlier, more intense interventions, and more ABA, whereas HFA individuals receive more pharmacologic treatments. Although the use of retrospective data is a clear limitation to the current study, the substantial differences in the reported provision of early intervention, and ABA in particular, is highly suggestive and should be replicated in prospective studies.

Conversational gestures in autism spectrum disorders: Asynchrony but not decreased frequency

Conversational or “co‐speech” gestures play an important role in communication, facilitating turntaking, providing visuospatial information, clarifying subtleties of emphasis, and other pragmatic cues. Consistent with other pragmatic language deficits, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are said to produce fewer conversational gestures, as specified in many diagnostic measures. Surprisingly, while research shows fewer deictic gestures in young children with ASD, there is a little empirical evidence addressing other forms of gesture. The discrepancy between clinical and empirical observations may reflect impairments unrelated to frequency, such as gesture quality or integration with speech. Adolescents with high‐functioning ASD (n=15), matched on age, gender, and IQ to 15 typically developing (TD) adolescents, completed a narrative task to assess the spontaneous production of speech and gesture. Naïve observers rated the stories for communicative quality. Overall, the ASD groups stories were rated as less clear and engaging. Although utterance and gesture rates were comparable, the ASD groups gestures were less closely synchronized with the co‐occurring speech, relative to control participants. This gesture–speech synchrony specifically impacted communicative quality across participants. Furthermore, while story ratings were associated with gesture count in TD adolescents, no such relationship was observed in adolescents with ASD, suggesting that gestures do not amplify communication in this population. Quality ratings were, however, correlated with ASD symptom severity scores, such that participants with fewer ASD symptoms were rated as telling higher quality stories. Implications of these findings are discussed in terms of communication and neuropsychological functioning in ASD.

Newborn infants learn during sleep

Newborn infants must rapidly adjust their physiology and behavior to the specific demands of the novel postnatal environment. This adaptation depends, at least in part, on the infants ability to learn from experiences. We report here that infants exhibit learning even while asleep. Bioelectrical activity from face and scalp electrodes was recorded from neonates during an eye movement conditioning procedure in which a tone was followed by a puff of air to the eye. Sleeping newborns rapidly learned the predictive relationship between the tone and the puff. Additionally, in the latter part of training, these infants exhibited a frontally maximum positive EEG slow wave possibly reflecting memory updating. As newborns spend most of their time sleeping, the ability to learn about external stimuli in the postnatal environment during nonawake states may be crucial for rapid adaptation and infant survival. Furthermore, because eyelid conditioning reflects functional cerebellar circuitry, this method potentially offers a unique approach for early identification of infants at risk for a range of developmental disorders including autism and dyslexia.

Contagious Yawning in Autistic and Typical Development

The authors tested susceptibility to contagious yawning in 120 children, 1-6 years, to identify the time course of its emergence during development. Results indicated a substantial increase in the frequency of contagious yawning at 4 years. In a second study, the authors examined contagious yawning in 28 children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), 6-15 years. Children with ASD showed diminished susceptibility to contagious yawning compared with 2 control groups matched for mental and chronological age, respectively. In addition, children diagnosed with Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) a milder variant of autism, were more susceptible to contagious yawning than were children diagnosed with full Autistic Disorder. The authors explore the implications of these findings for theories about the development of mimicry and emotional contagion.

Grammaticality judgments in autism: deviance or delay.

Language in autism has been the subject of intense interest, because communication deficits are central to the disorder, and because autism serves as an arena for testing theories of language acquisition. High-functioning older children with autism are often considered to have intact grammatical abilities, despite pragmatic impairments. Given the heterogeneity in language skills at younger ages, this assumption merits further investigation. Participants with autism (n=21, aged nine to seventeen years), matched on chronological age, receptive vocabulary and IQ, to 22 typically developing individuals, completed a grammaticality judgment task. Participants with autism were significantly less sensitive than controls, specifically for third person singular and present progressive marking. Performance interacted with sentence length, with lower sensitivity to errors occurring at the end of the longest stimulus sentences. Performance sensitivity was associated with onset of single word and phrase speech, and with severity of autistic symptomatology. Implications of findings are discussed.

Narrative Performance of Optimal Outcome Children and Adolescents with a History of an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) have traditionally been considered a lifelong condition; however, a subset of people makes such significant improvements that they no longer meet diagnostic criteria for an ASD. The current study examines whether these “optimal outcome” (OO) children and adolescents continue to have subtle pragmatic language deficits. The narratives of 15 OO individuals, 15 high-functioning individuals with an ASD (HFA), and 15 typically developing (TD) peers were evaluated. Despite average cognitive functioning, the ASD group produced narratives with fewer central “gist” descriptions, more ambiguous pronominal referents, idiosyncratic language, speech dysfluency (more repetitions and self-corrections), and were less likely to name story characters. The OO participants displayed only very subtle pragmatic and higher-level language deficits (idiosyncratic language and self-correction dysfluency).

Mutual exclusivity in autism spectrum disorders: Testing the pragmatic hypothesis

While there is ample evidence that children treat words as mutually exclusive, the cognitive basis of this bias is widely debated. We focus on the distinction between pragmatic and lexical constraints accounts. High-functioning children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) offer a unique perspective on this debate, as they acquire substantial vocabularies despite impoverished social-pragmatic skills. We tested children and adolescents with ASD in a paradigm examining mutual exclusivity for words and facts. Words were interpreted contrastively more often than facts. Word performance was associated with vocabulary size; fact performance was associated with social-communication skills. Thus mutual exclusivity does not appear to be driven by pragmatics, suggesting that it is either a lexical constraint or a reflection of domain-general learning processes.