Glutamate levels of the right and left anterior cingulate cortex in autistics adults.

Background: The neurobiology of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is still unknown. Alteration in glutamate metabolism might translate into an imbalance of the excitation/inhibition equilibrium of cortical networks that in turn are related to autistic symptoms, but previous studies using voxel located in bilateral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) failed to show abnormalities in total glutamate level. Due to the functional differences in the right and left ACC, we sought to determine whether a difference between right and left ACC glutamate levels could be found when comparing ASD patients and control subjects.

Inflexibility in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Need for certainty and atypical emotion processing share the blame.

Although ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) diagnosis requires the co-occurrence of socio-emotional deficits and inflexible behaviors, the interaction between these two domains remains unexplored. We used an emotional Wisconsin Card Sorting Test adapted to fMRI to explore this question. ASD and control participants matched a central card (a face) with one of four surrounding cards according to one of three rules: frame color, facial identity or expression.

Neurocognitive, emotional and neuroendocrine correlates of exposure to sexual assault in women.

Background: Survivors of sexual assault are vulnerable to long-term negative psychological and physical health outcomes, but few studies have investigated changes in cognition, emotional processing and brain function in the early stages after sexual assault. We used a multimodal approach to identify the cognitive and emotional correlates associated with sexual assault in women.

Methods: Twenty-seven female survivors of sexual assault were included within 4 weeks of the traumatic event, and they were compared with 20 age-matched controls.

Neurocognitive, emotional and neuroendocrine correlates of exposure to sexual assault in women.

Background: Survivors of sexual assault are vulnerable to long-term negative psychological and physical health outcomes, but few studies have investigated changes in cognition, emotional processing and brain function in the early stages after sexual assault. We used a multimodal approach to identify the cognitive and emotional correlates associated with sexual assault in women.

Methods: Twenty-seven female survivors of sexual assault were included within 4 weeks of the traumatic event, and they were compared with 20 age-matched controls.

Facial Expression Related vMMN: Disentangling Emotional from Neutral Change Detection.

Detection of changes in facial emotional expressions is crucial to communicate and to rapidly and automatically process possible threats in the environment. Recent studies suggest that expression-related visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) reflects automatic processing of emotional changes. In the present study we used a controlled paradigm to investigate the specificity of emotional change-detection.

Atypical visual change processing in children with autism: an electrophysiological study.

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may display atypical behaviors in reaction to unattended changes that occur in all sensory modalities. Atypical automatic auditory change processing has been highlighted in ASD via the analysis of mismatch negativity (MMN). The present study investigated visual deviancy detection in children with ASD in order to determine whether unusual reactions to change operate in other sensory modalities.

Electrophysiological correlates of automatic visual change detection in school-age children.

Automatic stimulus-change detection is usually investigated in the auditory modality by studying Mismatch Negativity (MMN). Although the change-detection process occurs in all sensory modalities, little is known about visual deviance detection, particularly regarding the development of this brain function throughout childhood. The aim of the present study was to examine the maturation of the electrophysiological response to unattended deviant visual stimuli in 11-year-old children.

Candidate electrophysiological endophenotypes of hyper-reactivity to change in autism.

Although resistance to change is a main feature of autism, the brain processes underlying this aspect of the disorder remain poorly understood. The aims of this study were to examine neural basis of auditory change-detection in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD; N = 27) through electrophysiological patterns (MMN, P3a) and to test whether these are quantitatively related to intolerance of change (using the BSE-R scale). ASD displayed significantly shorter MMN latency and larger P3a than controls, indicating a greater tendency to switch attention to deviant events.