Publications by authors named "R A Schachar"
Background: Differences in social behaviours are common in young people with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs). Recent research challenges the long-standing hypothesis that difficulties in social cognition explain social behaviour differences.
Aims: We examined how difficulties regulating one's behaviour, emotions and thoughts to adapt to environmental demands (i.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are neurodevelopmental conditions that share genetic etiology and frequently co-occur. Given this comorbidity and well-established clinical heterogeneity, identifying individuals with similar brain signatures may be valuable for predicting clinical outcomes and tailoring treatment strategies. Cortical myelination is a prominent developmental process, and its disruption is a candidate mechanism for both disorders.
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- Very large sample sizes are essential for studying autism, and data sharing among diverse studies can help create a unified dataset through data harmonization, which aligns scores from different assessment tools.
- The study used data from over 700 participants, comparing scores on two adaptive functioning measures (VABS and ABAS) and employed multiple regression techniques to predict VABS scores using ABAS scores and other demographic factors.
- Results revealed significantly higher VABS scores in the autism group compared to the ABAS scores, with age being a key factor, and all regression techniques performed similarly in predicting outcomes, highlighting the importance of ABAS score, diagnosis, and age in the prediction model.
With brain structure and function undergoing complex changes throughout childhood and adolescence, age is a critical consideration in neuroimaging studies, particularly for those of individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions. However, despite the increasing use of large, consortium-based datasets to examine brain structure and function in neurotypical and neurodivergent populations, it is unclear whether age-related changes are consistent between datasets and whether inconsistencies related to differences in sample characteristics, such as demographics and phenotypic features, exist. To address this, we built models of age-related changes of brain structure (regional cortical thickness and regional surface area; N = 1218) and function (resting-state functional connectivity strength; N = 1254) in two neurodiverse datasets: the Province of Ontario Neurodevelopmental Network and the Healthy Brain Network.
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- Autism and ADHD are complex neurodevelopmental disorders with overlapping features, but they are rarely studied together, especially regarding sex differences.
- The study utilized a large neuroimaging dataset to analyze cortical anatomy linked to autism and ADHD, revealing specific patterns in brain structure for each condition.
- Findings showed that autism presented with greater cortical thickness in specific areas, while ADHD had more global increases in thickness but lower volume and surface area; also, unique patterns were observed in individuals with both conditions.