Glutamatergic synapse in autism: a complex story for a complex disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder whose pathophysiological mechanisms are still unclear. Hypotheses suggest a role for glutamate dysfunctions in ASD development, but clinical studies investigating brain and peripheral glutamate levels showed heterogenous results leading to hypo- and hyper-glutamatergic hypotheses of ASD. Recently, studies proposed the implication of elevated mGluR5 densities in brain areas in the pathophysiology of ASD.

Autism spectrum disorder during French COVID-19 lockdown: The importance of individualized support.

Aim: This observational and repeated measures study assesses the impact of the first, most restrictive, COVID-19 lockdown in France on children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families.

Method: During the first COVID-19 lockdown, families of ASD children enrolled in the day-care centre of the child and adolescent psychiatry department of the Tours University Hospital were contacted weekly. A total of 95 parents took part in this study between the 18th of March and the 8th of May 2020.

Relationship between Behavioral and Objective Measures of Sound Intensity in Normal-Hearing Listeners and Hearing-Aid Users: A Pilot Study.

Background: For hearing-impaired individuals, hearing aids are clinically fit according to subjective measures of threshold and loudness. The goal of this study was to evaluate objective measures of loudness perception that might benefit hearing aid fitting. Method: Seventeen adult hearing aid users and 17 normal-hearing adults participated in the study.

Neural repetition suppression to vocal and non-vocal sounds.

Adaptation to the sensory environment is essential in everyday life, to anticipate future events and quickly detect and respond to changes; and to distinguish vocal variations in congeners, for communication. The aim of the current study was to explore the effects of the nature (vocal/non-vocal) of the information to be encoded, on the establishment of auditory regularities. In electrophysiology, neural adaptation is measured by the 'Repetition Positivity' (RP), which refers to an increase in positive potential, with the increasing number of repetitions of a same stimulus.

Early Intervention in Severe Autism: Positive Outcome Using Exchange and Development Therapy.

Early intervention programs positively affect key behaviors for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, most of these programs do not target children with severe autistic symptomatology associated with intellectual disability (ID). This study aimed to investigate the psychological and clinical outcomes of children with severe autism and ID enrolled in the Tailored and Inclusive Program for Autism-Tours (TIPA-T).

When Alterations in Social Cognition Meet Subjective Complaints in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Evaluation With the "ClaCoS" Battery.

Deficit in social communication is a core feature in Autism Spectrum Disorder but remains poorly assessed in classical clinical practice, especially in adult populations. This gap between needs and practice is partly due to a lack of standardized evaluation tools. The multicentric Research group in psychiatry GDR3557 (Institut de Psychiatrie) developed a new battery for social cognitive evaluation named "ClaCoS," which allows testing the main components of social cognition: Emotion Recognition, Theory of Mind, Attributional Style, and Social Perception and Knowledge.

Emotional visual mismatch negativity: a joint investigation of social and non-social dimensions in adults with autism.

Unusual behaviors and brain activity to socio-emotional stimuli have been reported in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Atypical reactivity to change and intolerance of uncertainty are also present, but little is known on their possible impact on facial expression processing in autism. The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) is an electrophysiological response automatically elicited by changing events such as deviant emotional faces presented among regular neutral faces.

Development of cortical auditory responses to speech in noise in unilaterally deaf adults following cochlear implantation.

Background: For patients with single-sided deafness (SSD), restoration of binaural function via cochlear implant (CI) has been shown to improve speech understanding in noise. The objective of this study was to investigate changes in behavioral performance and cortical auditory responses following cochlear implantation.

Design: Prospective longitudinal study.

Brain responses to change in phonological structures of varying complexity in children and adults.

Language-related change-detection processes are often investigated using syllables that are very simple in terms of phonological structure. However, phonological complexity is known to be challenging for young typically developing children and pathological populations. We investigated brain correlates of phonological processing and their age-related changes with a passive change-detection protocol including stimuli of varying phonological complexity, which allowed comparing responses to simple and complex phonological deviancies.

A Transnosographic Self-Assessment of Social Cognitive Impairments (ACSO): First Data.

Social cognition refers to the mental operations underlying social interactions. Given the major role of social cognitive deficits in the disability associated with severe psychiatric disorders, they therefore constitute a crucial therapeutic target. However, no easily understandable and transnosographic self-assessment scale evaluating the perceived difficulties is available.

Staffing needs for unscheduled activity in obstetrics and gynecology.

Introduction: To determine a minimum threshold of medical staffing needs (obstetricians-gynecologists, anesthesiologists-resuscitation specialists, nurse-anesthetists, pediatricians, and midwives) to ensure the safety and quality of care for unscheduled obstetrics-gynecology activity.

Materials And Methods: Face to face meetings of French healthcare professionals involved in perinatal care in different types of practices (academic hospital, community hospital or private practice) who belong to French perinatal societies: French National College of Gynecologists-Obstetricians (CNGOF), the French Society of Anesthesia and Resuscitation Specialists (SFAR), the French Society of Neonatology (SFN), the French Society of Perinatal Medicine (SFMP), the National College of French Midwives (CNSF), and the French Federation of Perinatal Care Networks (FFRSP).

Results: Different minimum thresholds for each category of care provider were proposed according to the number of births/year in the facility.

Incomplete Gestation has an Impact on Cognitive Abilities in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Extreme prematurity is known as a risk factor for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the association between prematurity and ASD, for children born moderately and late preterm (MLPT) and those born early term (ET), is less established. This retrospective study aimed to characterize the phenotypic characteristics (i.

Cranio-Facial Characteristics in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).

: Cranio-facial anomalies frequently occur in neurodevelopmental disorders because both face and brain are derived from neuroectoderm. The identification of differences in the facial phenotype of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) may reflect alterations in embryologic brain development in children with ASD. : we evaluated 33 caucasian children with ASD using a 2D computerized photogrammetry.

Author Correction: 22q13 deletion syndrome: communication disorder or autism? Evidence from a specific clinical and neurophysiological phenotype.

Since the online publication of the above article, the authors have noted errors with the author list. The author names were listed as '(last name)(first name)' instead of '(first name)(last name)'.

Autism is a prenatal disorder: Evidence from late gestation brain overgrowth.

This retrospective study aimed to specify the critical period for atypical brain development in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using prenatal and postnatal head growth parameters. The sample consisted of 80 Caucasian, unrelated, idiopathic patients with ASD born after 1995. Fetal ultrasound parameters (head circumference [HC], abdominal circumference, and femur length) were obtained during the second and third trimesters of gestation.

Cortical reorganization after cochlear implantation for adults with single-sided deafness.

Background: Adults with single sided deafness (SSD) have lost binaural function, which limits sound source localization, speech understanding in noise, and quality of life. For SSD patients, restoration of bilateral auditory input is possible only with a cochlear implant (CI). In this study, cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEPs) and behavioral performance were measured in left-implanted (SSD-CI-L) and right-implanted (SSD-CI-R) patients before and after cochlear implantation.

22q13 deletion syndrome: communication disorder or autism? Evidence from a specific clinical and neurophysiological phenotype.

Phelan-McDermid syndrome is related to terminal 22q13 deletions of various sizes affecting the SHANK3 gene. In this neurodevelopmental disorder, behavioural symptoms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are reported in half of cases. Extensive clinical and neurophysiological characterization is lacking to understand the genotype-phenotype correlation.

Brain mechanisms involved in angry prosody change detection in school-age children and adults, revealed by electrophysiology.

Voices transmit social signals through speech and/or prosody. Emotional prosody conveys key information about the emotional state of a speaker and is thus a crucial cue that one has to detect in order to develop efficient social communication. Previous studies in adults reported different brain responses to emotional than to neutral prosodic deviancy.

Minor Neurological Dysfunctions (MNDs) in Autistic Children without Intellectual Disability.

Background: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) require neurological evaluation to detect sensory-motor impairment. This will improve understanding of brain function in children with ASD, in terms of minor neurological dysfunctions (MNDs).

Methods: We compared 32 ASD children without intellectual disability (IQ ≥ 70) with 32 healthy controls.

A strategic plan to identify key neurophysiological mechanisms and brain circuits in autism.

Autism and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) cover a large variety of clinical profiles which share two main dimensions: social and communication impairment and repetitive behaviors or restricted interests, which are present during childhood. There is now no doubt that genetic factors are a major component in the etiology of autism but precise physiopathological pathways are still being investigated. Furthermore, developmental trajectories combined with compensatory mechanisms will lead to various clinical and neurophysiological profiles which together constitute this Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Cortical Processing of Vocal and Nonvocal Sounds in Cochlear-Implanted Children: An Electrophysiological Study.

Objectives: For prelingually deaf children, cochlear implants (CIs) can restore auditory input to the auditory cortex and the ability to acquire spoken language. Language development is strongly intertwined with voice perception. The aim of this electrophysiological study was to investigate human voice processing using measures of cortical auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) in pediatric CI users.

Atypical sound discrimination in children with ASD as indicated by cortical ERPs.

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show a relative indifference to the human voice. Accordingly, and contrarily to their typically developed peers, adults with autism do not show a preferential response to voices in the superior temporal sulcus; this lack of voice-specific response was previously linked to atypical processing of voices. In electroencephalography, a slow event-related potential (ERP) called the fronto-temporal positivity to voice (FTPV) is larger for vocal than for non-vocal sounds, resulting in a voice-sensitive response over right fronto-temporal sites.

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 Brain Mechanisms of Prediction According to Uncertainty in Autism.

Resistance to change is often reported in autism and may arise from an inability to predict events in uncertain contexts. Using EEG recorded in 12 adults with autism and age-matched controls performing a visual target detection task, we characterized the influence of a certain context (targets preceded by a predictive sequence of three distinct stimuli) or an uncertain context (random targets) on behavior and electrophysiological markers of predictive processing. During an uncertain context, adults with autism were faster than controls to detect targets.

Eye Movement Monitoring and Maturation of Human Face Exploration.

Objective: The aim of this study was to characterize ocular exploration of neutral and emotional faces in the typical development of a child.

Subjects And Method: In this eye-tracking study, visual exploration of faces (with neutral or emotional expressions: happiness or sadness) was characterized in a population of 52 children (24 girls and 28 boys from 4 to 15 years of age) and 44 adults (22 women and 22 men from 18 to 35 years of age). The time spent on the eyes, nose and mouth of the faces was measured.