White matter correlates of cognitive dysfunction after mild traumatic brain injury.

Objective: To relate neurophysiologic changes after mild/moderate traumatic brain injury to cognitive deficit in a longitudinal diffusion tensor imaging investigation.

Methods: Fifty-three patients were scanned an average of 6 days postinjury (range = 1-14 days). Twenty-three patients were rescanned 1 year later.

Spatial navigation impairments among intellectually high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorder: exploring relations with theory of mind, episodic memory, and episodic future thinking.

Research suggests that spatial navigation relies on the same neural network as episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and theory of mind (ToM). Such findings have stimulated theories (e.g.

Episodic memory and episodic future thinking impairments in high-functioning autism spectrum disorder: an underlying difficulty with scene construction or self-projection?

Objective: There appears to be a common network of brain regions that underlie the ability to recall past personal experiences (episodic memory) and the ability to imagine possible future personal experiences (episodic future thinking). At the cognitive level, these abilities are thought to rely on "scene construction" (the ability to bind together multimodal elements of a scene in mind--dependent on hippocampal functioning) and temporal "self-projection" (the ability to mentally project oneself through time--dependent on prefrontal cortex functioning). Although autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by diminished episodic memory, it is unclear whether episodic future thinking is correspondingly impaired.

Genetic variation in CNTNAP2 alters brain function during linguistic processing in healthy individuals.

Language impairments are a characteristic feature of autism and related autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). Autism is also highly heritable and one of the most promising candidate genes implicated in its pathogenesis is contactin-associated protein-like 2 (CNTNAP2), a gene also associated with language impairment. In the current study we investigated the functional effects of variants of CNTNAP2 associated with autism and language impairment (rs7794745 and rs2710102; presumed risk alleles T and C, respectively) in healthy individuals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of a language task (n = 66).

The neural basis of familial risk and temperamental variation in individuals at high risk of bipolar disorder.

Background: Bipolar disorder is a highly heritable psychiatric disorder characterized by episodic elevation or depression of mood. Bipolar disorder is associated with structural and functional brain abnormalities but it is unclear whether these are present in relatives of affected individuals and if they are associated with subclinical symptoms or traits associated with the disorder.

Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were conducted on 93 unrelated relatives of bipolar disorder patients and 70 healthy comparison subjects performing the Hayling sentence completion paradigm.

White matter integrity in individuals at high genetic risk of bipolar disorder.

Background: Bipolar disorder is a familial psychiatric disorder associated with reduced white matter integrity, but it is not clear whether such abnormalities are present in young unaffected relatives and, if so, whether they have behavioral correlates. We investigated with whole brain diffusion tensor imaging whether increased genetic risk for bipolar disorder is associated with reductions in white matter integrity and whether these reductions are associated with cyclothymic temperament.

Methods: Diffusion tensor imaging data of 117 healthy unaffected relatives of patients with bipolar disorder and 79 control subjects were acquired.