Dolphin CONTINUE: a multi-center randomized controlled trial to assess the effect of a nutritional intervention on brain development and long-term outcome in infants born before 30 weeks of gestation.

Background: Preterm born infants are at risk for brain injury and subsequent developmental delay. Treatment options are limited, but optimizing postnatal nutrition may improve brain- and neurodevelopment in these infants. In pre-clinical animal models, combined supplementation of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), choline, and uridine-5-monophosphate (UMP) have shown to support neuronal membrane formation.

Atypically slow processing of faces and non-faces in older autistic adults.

Some theories suggested that social difficulties in autism arise from differences in the processing of faces. If face-processing difficulties are central to autism, then they should be as persistent as social difficulties across the lifespan. We tested this by asking autistic and neurotypical participants between 30 and 75 years to complete face detection tasks.

Brief Report: Using Cognitive Screeners in Autistic Adults.

By comparing 51 autistic adults and 49 age-matched controls (aged 30-73 years) we tested if (1) the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is more sensitive in measuring cognitive impairments than the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and (2) if we can replicate the MoCA-findings of Powell et al. (2017) with the Dutch MoCA(-NL). Results showed that: (1) The MoCA-NL is more sensitive, and (2) like Powell, no group differences were observed on the MoCA-NL.

Age-variant and age-invariant features of functional brain organization in middle-aged and older autistic adults.

Background: The majority of research effort into autism has been dedicated to understanding mechanisms during early development. As a consequence, research on the broader life course of an autism spectrum condition (ASC) has largely been neglected and almost nothing is known about ASC beyond middle age. Differences in brain connectivity that arise during early development may be maintained across the lifespan and may play protective or detrimental roles in older age.