COVID-19 health and social care access for autistic people: European policy review.

Background: The global COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented impact on European health and social care systems, with demands on testing, hospital and intensive care capacity exceeding available resources in many regions. This has led to concerns that some vulnerable groups, including autistic people, may be excluded from services.

Methods: We reviewed policies from 15 European member states, published in March-July 2020, pertaining to (1) access to COVID-19 tests; (2) provisions for treatment, hospitalisation and intensive care units (ICUs); and (3) changes to standard health and social care.

Imbalanced social-communicative and restricted repetitive behavior subtypes of autism spectrum disorder exhibit different neural circuitry.

Social-communication (SC) and restricted repetitive behaviors (RRB) are autism diagnostic symptom domains. SC and RRB severity can markedly differ within and between individuals and may be underpinned by different neural circuitry and genetic mechanisms. Modeling SC-RRB balance could help identify how neural circuitry and genetic mechanisms map onto such phenotypic heterogeneity.

Striatal dopaminergic alterations in individuals with copy number variants at the 22q11.2 genetic locus and their implications for psychosis risk: a [18F]-DOPA PET study.

Dopaminergic dysregulation is one of the leading hypotheses for the pathoetiology underlying psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Molecular imaging studies have shown increased striatal dopamine synthesis capacity (DSC) in schizophrenia and people in the prodrome of psychosis. However, it is unclear if genetic risk for psychosis is associated with altered DSC.

Small cats in big trouble? Diet, activity, and habitat use of jungle cats and leopard cats in threatened dry deciduous forests, Cambodia.

Dry deciduous dipterocarp forests (DDF) cover about 15%-20% of Southeast Asia and are the most threatened forest type in the region. The jungle cat () is a DDF specialist that occurs only in small isolated populations in Southeast Asia. Despite being one of the rarest felids in the region, almost nothing is known about its ecology.

Reward-Related Neural Circuitry in Depressed and Anxious Adolescents: A Human Connectome Project.

Objective: Although depression and anxiety often have distinct etiologies, they frequently co-occur in adolescence. Recent initiatives have underscored the importance of developing new ways of classifying mental illness based on underlying neural dimensions that cut across traditional diagnostic boundaries. Accordingly, the aim of the study was to clarify reward-related neural circuitry that may characterize depressed-anxious youth.

Disentangling interactions among mercury, immunity and infection in a Neotropical bat community.

1. Contaminants such as mercury are pervasive and can have immunosuppressive effects on wildlife. Impaired immunity could be important for forecasting pathogen spillover, as many land-use changes that generate mercury contamination also bring wildlife into close contact with humans and domestic animals.

Estradiol prevented intestinal ischemia and reperfusion-induced changes in intestinal permeability and motility in male rats.

Objectives: Ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) in the intestine could lead to severe endothelial injury, compromising intestinal motility. Reportedly, estradiol can control local and systemic inflammation induced by I/R injury. Thus, we investigated the effects of estradiol treatment on local repercussions in an intestinal I/R model.

Genetic removal of p70 S6K1 corrects coding sequence length-dependent alterations in mRNA translation in fragile X syndrome mice.

Loss of the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) causes fragile X syndrome (FXS). FMRP is widely thought to repress protein synthesis, but its translational targets and modes of control remain in dispute. We previously showed that genetic removal of p70 S6 kinase 1 (S6K1) corrects altered protein synthesis as well as synaptic and behavioral phenotypes in FXS mice.

An effort-based social feedback paradigm reveals aversion to popularity in socially anxious participants and increased motivation in adolescents.

We created a novel social feedback paradigm to study how motivation for potential social links is influenced in adolescents and adults. 88 participants (42F/46M) created online posts and then expended physical effort to show their posts to other users, who varied in number of followers and probability of positive feedback. We focused on two populations of particular interest from a social feedback perspective: adolescents relative to young adults (13-17 vs 18-24 years of age), and participants with social anxiety symptoms.

Free-breathing abdominal T mapping using an optimized MR fingerprinting sequence.

In this work, we propose a free-breathing magnetic resonance fingerprinting (MRF) method that can be used to obtain B -robust quantitative T maps of the abdomen in a clinically acceptable time. A three-dimensional MRF sequence with a radial stack-of-stars trajectory was implemented, and its k-space acquisition ordering was adjusted to improve motion-robustness in the context of MRF. The flip angle pattern was optimized using the Cramér-Rao Lower Bound, and the encoding efficiency of sequences with 300, 600, 900 and 1800 flip angles was evaluated.

Cell-type-specific disruption of PERK-eIF2α signaling in dopaminergic neurons alters motor and cognitive function.

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and the unfolded protein response (UPR) has been shown to activate the eIF2α kinase PERK to directly regulate translation initiation. Tight control of PERK-eIF2α signaling has been shown to be necessary for normal long-lasting synaptic plasticity and cognitive function, including memory. In contrast, chronic activation of PERK-eIF2α signaling has been shown to contribute to pathophysiology, including memory impairments, associated with multiple neurological diseases, making this pathway an attractive therapeutic target.

Genetic vulnerability of exposures to antenatal maternal treatments in 1- to 2-month-old infants.

The growth and maturation of the nervous system are vulnerable during pregnancy. The impact of antenatal exposures to maternal treatments, in the context of genetic vulnerability of the fetus, on sensorimotor functioning in early infancy remains unexplored. Statistical features of head movements obtained from resting-state sleep fMRI scans are examined in 1- to 2-month-old infants, both those at high risk (HR) for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) due to a biological sibling with ASD and at low risk (LR) (N = 56).

T1-Weighted/T2-Weighted Ratio Mapping at 5 Months Captures Individual Differences in Behavioral Development and Differentiates Infants at Familial Risk for Autism from Controls.

Identifying structural measures that capture early brain development and are sensitive to individual differences in behavior is a priority in developmental neuroscience, with potential implications for our understanding of both typical and atypical populations. T1-weighted/T2-weighted (T1w/T2w) ratio mapping, which previously has been linked to myelination, represents an interesting candidate measure in this respect, as an accessible measure from standard magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences. Yet, its value as an early infancy measure remains largely unexplored.

A novel murine model of pulmonary fibrosis: the role of platelets in chronic changes induced by bleomycin.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a disease that causes scarring and destruction of lung tissue that is ultimately fatal. There is a need to develop improved treatments for IPF. One problem with identifying novel treatments of IPF is the poor predictability of current preclinical models.

Social Feedback Valence Differentially Modulates the Reward Positivity, P300, and Late Positive Potential.

Abnormal social or reward processing is associated with several mental disorders. Although most studies examining reward processing have focused on monetary rewards, recent research also has tested neural reactivity to social rewards (e.g.

Mental rotation performance in young adults with and without developmental coordination disorder.

While there have been consistent behavioural reports of atypical hand rotation task (HRT) performance in adults with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), this study aimed to clarify whether this deficit could be attributed to specific difficulties in motor imagery (MI), as opposed to broad deficits in general mental rotation. Participants were 57 young adults aged 18-30 years with (n = 22) and without DCD (n = 35). Participants were compared on the HRT, a measure of MI, and the letter number rotation task (LNRT), a common visual imagery task.

A white paper on a neurodevelopmental framework for drug discovery in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.

In the last decade there has been a revolution in terms of genetic findings in neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs), with many discoveries critical for understanding their aetiology and pathophysiology. Clinical trials in single-gene disorders such as fragile X syndrome highlight the challenges of investigating new drug targets in NDDs. Incorporating a developmental perspective into the process of drug development for NDDs could help to overcome some of the current difficulties in identifying and testing new treatments.

Relationship between GABA levels and task-dependent cortical excitability in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Objective: Compared to typically developing (TD) peers, children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) manifest reduced short interval cortical inhibition (SICI) in the dominant motor cortex measured with transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This multimodal study investigates the inhibitory neurophysiology and neurochemistry by evaluating the relationship between SICI and γ-amino butyric acid (GABA+) levels, measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS).

Methods: Across two sites, 37 children with ADHD and 45 TD children, ages 8-12 years, participated.

Adaptation by Ancient Horizontal Acquisition of Butyrate Metabolism Genes in Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans.

Like the bacterial residents of the human gut, it is likely that many of the species in the human oral microbiota have evolved to better occupy and persist in their niche. () is both a common colonizer of the oral cavity and has been implicated in the pathogenesis of periodontal disease. Here, we present a whole-genome phylogenetic analysis of isolates from humans and nonhuman primates that revealed an ancient origin for this species and a long history of association with the , the lineage that includes Old World monkeys (OWM) and humans.

Improved whole-brain SNR with an integrated high-permittivity material in a head array at 7T.

Purpose: To demonstrate that strategic use of materials with high electric permittivity along with integrated head-sized coil arrays can improve SNR in the entire brain.

Methods: Numerical simulations were used to design a high-permittivity material (HPM) helmet for enhancing SNR throughout the brain in receive arrays of 8 and 28 channels. Then, two 30-channel head coils of identical geometry were constructed: one fitted with a prototype helmet-shaped ceramic HPM helmet, and the second with a helmet-shaped low-permittivity shell, each 8-mm thick.

Reductive evolution of virulence repertoire to drive the divergence between community- and hospital-associated methicillin-resistant of the ST1 lineage.

Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) of the ST1-SCCIV lineage has been associated with community-acquired (CA) infections in North America and Australia. In Brazil, multi-drug resistant ST1-SCCIV MRSA has emerged in hospital-associated (HA) diseases in Rio de Janeiro. To understand these epidemiological differences, genomic and phylogenetic analyses were performed.