In the mood to be social: Affective state influences facial emotion recognition in healthy adults.

The ability to accurately recognize facial expressions is a key element of social interaction. Facial emotion recognition (FER) assessments show promise as a clinical screening and therapeutic tool, but realizing this potential requires better understanding of the stability of this skill. Transient mood states are known to bias emotion recognition in some contexts and may represent a critical factor impacting FER ability.

Supernumerary neurons within the cerebral cortical subplate in autism spectrum disorders.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) involve alterations to cortical connectivity that manifest as reduced coordinated activity between cortical regions. The neurons of the cortical subplate are a major contributor to establishing thalamocortical, corticothalamic and corticocortical long-range connections and only a subset of this cell population survives into adulthood. Previous reports of an indistinct gray-white matter boundary in subjects with ASD suggest that the adjacent subplate may also show organizational abnormalities.

Atypical Asymmetry for Processing Human and Robot Faces in Autism Revealed by fNIRS.

Deficits in the visual processing of faces in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) individuals may be due to atypical brain organization and function. Studies assessing asymmetric brain function in ASD individuals have suggested that facial processing, which is known to be lateralized in neurotypical (NT) individuals, may be less lateralized in ASD. Here we used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to first test this theory by comparing patterns of lateralized brain activity in homologous temporal-occipital facial processing regions during observation of faces in an ASD group and an NT group.

Review: Cortical construction in autism spectrum disorder: columns, connectivity and the subplate.

The cerebral cortex undergoes protracted maturation during human development and exemplifies how biology and environment are inextricably intertwined in the construction of complex neural circuits. Autism spectrum disorders are characterized by a number of pathological changes arising from this developmental process. These include: (i) alterations to columnar structure that have significant implications for the organization of cortical circuits and connectivity; (ii) alterations to synaptic spines on individual cortical units that may underlie specific types of connectional changes; and (iii) alterations within the cortical subplate, a region that plays a role in proper cortical development and in regulating interregional communication in the mature brain.

Sigmoid fits to locate and characterize cortical boundaries in human cerebral cortex.

Quantitative evaluation of neuropathology within the cortex often requires a significant investigator time commitment. Here we elaborate on a method of quantifying the distinctiveness of the gray-white matter boundary using function fitting methods (Avino and Hutsler, 2010) and demonstrate that it can also be adapted to reliably identify the location of the gray matter/white matter (GM-WM) boundary in microscopic images, even when that boundary is indistinct. Multiple images of the gray-white matter boundary were acquired from sixteen subjects.

Abnormal cell patterning at the cortical gray-white matter boundary in autism spectrum disorders.

Previous research on neuronal spacing and columnar organization indicates the presence of cell patterning alterations within the cerebral cortex of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). These patterning abnormalities include irregularities at the gray-white matter boundary and may implicate early neurodevelopmental events such as migration in altering cortical organization in ASD. The present study utilized a novel method to quantify the gray-white matter boundary in eight ASD and eight typically developing control subjects.

Increased dendritic spine densities on cortical projection neurons in autism spectrum disorders.

Multiple types of indirect evidence have been used to support theories of altered cortical connectivity in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). In other developmental disorders reduced spine expression is commonly found, while conditions such as fragile X syndrome show increased spine densities. Despite its relevance to theories of altered cortical connectivity, synaptic spine expression has not been systematically explored in ASD.

Histological and magnetic resonance imaging assessment of cortical layering and thickness in autism spectrum disorders.

Background: Qualitative reports of the cerebral cortex in a small number of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) cases have suggested an increase in thickness and disruptions in migration and lamination patterns.

Methods: We examined postmortem ASD individuals and age-matched controls using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to evaluate total cortical thickness, and histological samples to evaluate the pattern of cortical layering.

Results: Overall, thickness measures from ASD subjects were equivalent to control cases.

Comparative analysis of cortical layering and supragranular layer enlargement in rodent carnivore and primate species.

The mammalian cerebral cortex is composed of individual layers characterized by the cell types they contain and their afferent and efferent connections. The current study examined the raw, and size-normalized, laminar thicknesses in three cortical regions (somatosensory, motor, and premotor) of fourteen species from three orders of mammals: primates, carnivores, and rodents. The proportional size of the pyramidal cell layers (supra- and infragranular) varied between orders but was similar within orders despite wide variance in absolute cortical thickness.

Visual and tactile interhemispheric transfer compared with the method of Poffenberger.

In a simple manual reaction time task, reaction times are longer if the responding hand and visual field of the stimulus are contralateral than when the hand and field are ipsilateral. This small crossed vs. uncrossed difference (CUD) has often been attributed to the interhemispheric transmission time incurred when the hemisphere receiving the sensory input is not the one initiating the motor response.

The specialized structure of human language cortex: pyramidal cell size asymmetries within auditory and language-associated regions of the temporal lobes.

Functional lateralization of language within the cerebral cortex has long driven the search for structural asymmetries that might underlie language asymmetries. Most examinations of structural asymmetry have focused upon the gross size and shape of cortical regions in and around language areas. In the last 20 years several labs have begun to document microanatomical asymmetries in the structure of language-associated cortical regions.

Does microwaving enhance the Golgi methods? A quantitative analysis of disparate staining patterns in the cerebral cortex.

As a family of techniques, the Golgi methods have long been used for studying the morphology and structure of the central nervous system. Due to their capricious nature, many modifications have been employed to improve the reliability and quality of the technique, including the recent addition of microwave energy. In the present study, we evaluated the effectiveness of adding microwave energy to two Golgi methods: the Golgi-Cox method and the rapid Golgi method.