Attention Analysis in Robotic-Assistive Therapy for Children With Autism.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) show severe attention deficits, hindering their capacity to acquire new skills. The automatic assessment of their attention response would provide the therapists with an important biomarker to better quantify their behaviour and monitor their progress during therapy. This work aims to develop a quantitative model, to evaluate the attention response of children with ASD, during robotic-assistive therapeutic sessions.

Motor cortical inhibitory deficits in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder-A systematic review and meta-analysis of transcranial magnetic stimulation literature.

Introduction: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a highly prevalent chronic disorder, often refractory to treatment. While remaining elusive, a full understanding of the pathophysiology of OCD is crucial to optimize treatment. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non-invasive technique that, paired with other neurophysiological techniques, such as electromyography, allows for assessment of human corticospinal neurophysiology.

Criterion and construct validity of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) to measure depression in patients with cancer: The contribution of somatic items.

Background/objective: Screening for depression in patients with cancer can be difficult due to overlap between symptoms of depression and cancer. We assessed validity of the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) in this population.

Method: Data was obtained in an outpatient neuropsychiatry unit treating patients with and without cancer.

Is the dolphin a fish? ERP evidence for the impact of typicality during early visual processing in ultra-rapid semantic categorization in autism spectrum disorder.

Background: Neurotypical individuals categorize items even during ultra-rapid presentations (20 ms; see Thorpe et al. Nature 381: 520, 1996). In cognitively able autistic adults, these semantic categorization processes may be impaired and/or may require additional time, specifically for the categorization of atypical compared to typical items.

The Distinctive Pattern of Declarative Memories in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Further Evidence of Episodic Memory Constraints.

This study examines declarative memory retrieval in ASD depending on the availability and access to stored conceptual knowledge. Fifteen autistic participants and a matched control group of 18 typically-developed (TD) volunteers completed a Remember-Know paradigm manipulated by encoding-type (categorical, perceptual) and item-typicality (high-typical, low-typical). The autistic group showed worse and slower recognition and less recollection but equivalent familiarity-based memories compared to TDs.

Explicit knowledge of task structure is a primary determinant of human model-based action.

Explicit information obtained through instruction profoundly shapes human choice behaviour. However, this has been studied in computationally simple tasks, and it is unknown how model-based and model-free systems, respectively generating goal-directed and habitual actions, are affected by the absence or presence of instructions. We assessed behaviour in a variant of a computationally more complex decision-making task, before and after providing information about task structure, both in healthy volunteers and in individuals suffering from obsessive-compulsive or other disorders.

Attribution of intentions in autism spectrum disorder: A study of event-related potentials.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social cognition deficits, including difficulties inferring the intentions of others. Although deficits in attribution of intentions (AI) have been consistently replicated in ASD, their exact nature remains unexplored. Here we registered the electrophysiological correlates of a nonverbal social cognition task to investigate AI in autistic adults.

Diagnosis and Treatment of Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome in the Intensive Care Unit: A Case Report.

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome is a neurological emergency caused by dysregulation of dopaminergic neurotransmission. While it is typically characterized by muscle rigidity, fever and altered mental status, it may have a heterogeneous and non-specific presentation, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment. Treatment involves cessation of dopamine-receptor antagonists and supportive measures, but in more severe cases, bromocriptine, dantrolene, benzodiazepines and/or electroconvulsive therapy should be considered.

Mapping mania symptoms based on focal brain damage.

BACKGROUNDAlthough mania is characteristic of bipolar disorder, it can also occur following focal brain damage. Such cases may provide unique insight into brain regions responsible for mania symptoms and identify therapeutic targets.METHODSLesion locations associated with mania were identified using a systematic literature search (n = 41) and mapped onto a common brain atlas.

Right-sided brain lesions predominate among patients with lesional mania: evidence from a systematic review and pooled lesion analysis.

Despite claims that lesional mania is associated with right-hemisphere lesions, supporting evidence is scarce, and association with specific brain areas has not been demonstrated. Here, we aimed to test whether focal brain lesions in lesional mania are more often right- than left-sided, and if lesions converge on areas relevant to mood regulation. We thus performed a systematic literature search (PROSPERO registration CRD42016053675) on PubMed and Web-Of-Science, using terms that reflect diagnoses and structures of interest, as well as lesional mechanisms.

Determinants of quality of life in patients with drug-resistant focal epilepsy.

Introduction: Focal drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) has been associated with a significant burden of psychiatric comorbidity and low health-related quality of life (HRQoL). There is ample disagreement in previous studies as to which factors decisively influence HRQoL in this population. Here, we sought to assess the relationship between sociodemographic factors, epilepsy-related variables, and psychiatric comorbidity with HRQoL in a well-defined group of patients with focal DRE.

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome: a concealed diagnosis with multitreatment approach.

While neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is typically characterised by delirium, motor rigidity, fever and dysautonomia, the syndrome is not pathognomonic, and NMS remains a diagnosis of exclusion. Here, we describe the case of a 44-year-old woman, with no relevant psychiatric history, admitted to a nephrology unit due to acute renal failure. After administration of antipsychotics, she presented with mental status alteration, generalised tremor, rigidity and autonomic nervous system dysfunction.

[Needs for Care and Service Use in Dementia: Baseline Assessment of Portuguese Participants in the Actifcare Cohort Study].

Introduction: People with dementia and their relatives should have timely access to formal care in the community. The EU-Actifcare project analysed access to and use of formal services, as related to unmet needs for care. We describe the cohort study implementation and baseline results in Portugal, with a focus on needs for care and service use assessments.

Reversible dementia, psychotic symptoms and epilepsy in a patient with vitamin B deficiency.

Vitamin B deficiency is a common condition, typically associated with megaloblastic anaemia, glossitis and neuropsychiatric symptoms. We report the case of a patient presenting with progressive cognitive and functional deterioration, psychosis and seizures, later found to be secondary to pernicious anaemia. Importantly, the diagnosis of pernicious anaemia was only established 5 years after symptom onset and was overlooked even when the patient was under medical care, in part due to the lack of classic neurological and haematological signs associated with the condition.

We see the orange not the lemon: typicality effects in ultra-rapid categorization in adults with and without autism spectrum disorder.

Semantic meaning can be extracted from pictures presented very briefly, in the order of tens of milliseconds. This ultra-rapid categorization processing appears to respect a coarse-to-fine path where lower level representations of concepts, or more detailed information, need additional time. We question whether variations in the levels of typicality of the target-item would implicate additional processing for correct classification, both in neurotypical (NT) individuals and with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

Hypomania Symptoms Across Psychiatric Disorders: Screening Use of the Hypomania Check-List 32 at Admission to an Outpatient Psychiatry Clinic.

Hypomania symptoms are best described as a continuum, ranging beyond Bipolar Spectrum Disorders (BSD). Other nosological entities, such as major depressive disorder, schizoaffective disorder, or borderline personality disorder, may also share symptoms with BSD, raising challenges for differential diagnosis. While the Hypomania Checklist-32 is one of the most widely used tools for screening hypomania, there is limited evidence describing its use in a real-world outpatient psychiatric clinical setting.

Social Cognition in Schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Direct Comparisons.

Deficits in social cognition are well-recognized in both schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders (ASD). However, it is less clear how social cognition deficits differ between both disorders and what distinct mechanisms may underlie such differences. We aimed at reviewing available evidence from studies directly comparing social cognitive performance between individuals with schizophrenia and ASD.

Criterion Validity of the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Second Edition for Diagnosis of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in Adults.

While the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale Second Edition (Y-BOCS-II) is the gold-standard for measurement of obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptom severity, its factor structure is still a matter of debate and, most importantly, criterion validity for diagnosis of OC disorder (OCD) has not been tested. This study aimed to clarify factor structure and criterion validity of the Y-BOCS-II. We first validated and quantified the psychometric properties of a culturally adapted Portuguese translation of the Y-BOCS-II (PY-BOCS-II).

Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder manifesting as lifelong deficits in social communication and interaction, as well as restricted repetitive behaviors, interests and activities. While there are no specific pharmacological or other physical treatments for autism, in recent years repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS), a technique for non-invasive neuromodulation, has attracted interest due to potential therapeutic value. Here we report the results of a systematic literature review and meta-analysis on the use of rTMS to treat ASD.

From Thought to Action: How the Interplay Between Neuroscience and Phenomenology Changed Our Understanding of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has evolved with the knowledge of behavior, the brain, and their relationship. Modern views of OCD as a neuropsychiatric disorder originated from early lesion studies, with more recent models incorporating detailed neuropsychological findings, such as perseveration in set-shifting tasks, and findings of altered brain structure and function, namely of orbitofrontal corticostriatal circuits and their limbic connections. Interestingly, as neurobiological models of OCD evolved from cortical and cognitive to sub-cortical and behavioral, the focus of OCD phenomenology also moved from thought control and contents to new concepts rooted in animal models of action control.