Active clinical trials for "Autism Spectrum Disorder"

The SMART Program at Nationwide Children's Hospital is an interdisciplinary social skills group that teaches children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) ages 2-12 the fundamental social skills necessary to build and maintain relationships. The manualized curriculum addresses skills such as joint attention, eye contact, play, and peer engagement. Currently individual goals are set for each child who participates and this is documented in the daily treatment note. In order to research group outcomes, the investigators will use parent questionnaires (an addition to current clinical practices) to measure changes in behavior after each 12 week session for up to one year of treatment. The investigators hypothesize that maladaptive behaviors will decrease and adaptive behaviors will increase in children with ASD after participation in the SMART program.

The investigators will conduct a randomized placebo-controlled trial of a computerized intervention targeting cognition in 30 teens with autism spectrum disorder.

The following study aims to understand the mechanism of action at work in a novel artificial intelligence (AI) tool that runs on Google Glass through an Android app to deliver social emotion cues to children with autism during social interactions. This study will examine 2 versions of software on the Google Glass based wearable intervention system. Participants will receive 1 of 2 versions of the software and use the device at home for 4 weeks. This novel device will use a camera, microphone, head motion tracker to analyze the behavior of the subject during interactions with other people. The system is designed to give participants non-interruptive social cues in real-time and will record social responses that can later be used to help aid behavioral therapy. It is hypothesized that both mechanisms under investigation will contribute to social gains in children over the 4 week period of use.

This study compares the efficacy of two intervention strategies for improving social outcomes for autistic adolescents and young adults when interacting with unfamiliar non-autistic peers.

Cognoa will measure usability, engagement with the device, and changes in parent-reported socialization during a 4-week period of intervention at home with the Cognoa ASD therapeutic device.

Social cognition impairment is critical to the pathology and morbidity of a number of psychiatric disorders, including the schizophrenia spectrum, the autism spectrum and the personality disorders, thus representing a dimension consistent with RDoC. As such, this study aims to a) further characterize the unique deficits in social cognition (recognition and interpretation of social cues and representation of thoughts, intentions, and feelings of others) across disorders, including the schizophrenia spectrum (which includes schizophrenia, SCZ, schizoaffective disorder, SAD, bipolar disorder, BD, and schizotypal personality disorder, SPD), the autism spectrum disorders (ASD), and borderline personality disorder (BPD) compared to healthy controls (HC); b) assess the effect of intranasal oxytocin (OXT) as a regulator and novel treatment of social cognition impairment in these disorders; and c) enhance our understanding of the specificity and exact mechanisms of impairment to inform the accurate dosing of OXT required to modulate social cognition in these disorders and identify a model of optimum social cognitive function. Addressing these questions will further catalyze research into a model of optimum social cognitive activity, and accelerate industry development of agents suited to routine clinical administration.

The Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) are severe neurodevelopmental disorders, affecting nearly 1% of the general population. The disorder of social interaction has often been described as resulting from poor emotion recognition, or a bad perception of biological motion. However, the results of studies on these issues are very divergent. The PDD also been described as a disorder of emotion regulation, but few studies address the emotional feelings of individuals with ASD and their neuropsychological implications. The main objective is to study the effect of induced emotion in the children with ASD on his visual exploration strategies. This is a comparative exploratory pilot study. We'll look at using the eye-tracking, policy terms of the look in a group of children with ASD, in a context of emotional induction (joy, fear, sadness or anger) using of sound stimuli.

The purpose of this study is to determine if routine consumption of high antioxidant cacao can have an effect on the behaviors of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This is proposed as children with Autism Spectrum Disorder have elevated oxidative stress markers, such as, free radicals making them highly vulnerable to oxidative damage. Thus, it is proposed that foods high in antioxidant activity can offer protection against oxidative stress and thus impact behaviors.

The aim of this study is to investigate if taking a supplement called Glutathione by mouth is safe and practical for children and teenagers with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The researchers plan to involve 24 individuals with ASD and give them oral Glutathione for 12 weeks.

Early onset schizophrenia "early dissociative disorder" is a rare disorder with a low incidence of approximately (1/5000 to 1/20000). Its link with autism spectrum disorders remains unknown although both are serious neurodevelopmental diseases. As part of the 2011-2013 Interregional hospital Clinical Research program, University Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Pediatric Hospitals of CHU de Nice Lenval identified patients with a complex phenotype characterized by an early schizophrenia associated with autism spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities in mild to moderate. This phenotype could be a new syndrome. The goal of our project is to define the genetic causes of this phenotype. The technique of high throughput sequencing will be used to obtain the sequence of exomes of these patients and their families. This study will therefore be important to give an accurate diagnosis for patients and their families. Moreover, we believe that this project will identify new genes involved allowing a better understanding of the pathophysiology. Recent studies show the involvement of mutations in several genes (eg NRXN1 and UPF3B) in these different clinical phenotypes. However, the genetic basis of the childhood and early onset schizophrenia are much less well known than those of autism spectrum disorder