Brain volumes, cognitive, and adaptive skills in school-age children with Down syndrome.

Background: Down syndrome (DS) is the most common congenital neurodevelopmental disorder, present in about 1 in every 700 live births. Despite its prevalence, literature exploring the neurobiology underlying DS and how this neurobiology is related to behavior is limited. This study fills this gap by examining cortical volumes and behavioral correlates in school-age children with DS.

Trial-to-trial motor behavior during a reinforcement learning task in children ages 6 to 12.

Introduction: During practice, learners use available feedback from one trial to develop and implement motor commands for the next trial. Unsuccessful trials (i.e.

Independent Contributions of Callous-Unemotional Behaviors and Quantitative Autistic Traits to Aggression in Early Childhood.

Objective: Callous-unemotional (CU) behaviors and quantitative autistic traits (QATs), heritable domains implicated in social development, are both associated with reduced prosocial behavior and increased aggression at their clinical extremes. However, they are hypothesized to contribute to aggression through separate mechanisms. This study tested whether CU behaviors and QATs exhibited distinct profiles of heritable influences as well as independent contributions to early childhood aggression in a general population sample with enhanced sensitivity to clarify these relationships.

Motor competence is related to acquisition of error-based but not reinforcement learning in children ages 6 to 12.

Background: An essential component of childhood development is increasing motor competence. Poor motor learning is often thought to underlie impaired motor competence, but this link is unclear in previous studies.

Aims: Our aim was to test the relationship between motor competence and motor learning in the acquisition phase.

Mapping neural correlates of biological motion perception in autistic children using high-density diffuse optical tomography.

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a neurodevelopmental disorder defined by social communication deficits plus repetitive behaviors and restricted interests, currently affects 1/36 children in the general population. Recent advances in functional brain imaging show promise to provide useful biomarkers of ASD diagnostic likelihood, behavioral trait severity, and even response to therapeutic intervention. However, current gold-standard neuroimaging methods (e.