Active clinical trials for "Child Development Disorders, Pervasive"

There is increasing awareness in the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) research field about the deficit of knowledge with regard to the neurobiological, cognitive, and behavioral changes that occur in adults with ASD across the later portion of the lifespan. Decline in motor skills and cognitive function in typical aging can have devastating impacts on an individual's ability to organize and maintain activities of daily living. While there is an overall lack of research on how these processes unfold across aging specifically in ASD, previous research findings of motor and cognitive deficits in young adults with ASD, localization of these functions to the anterior cerebral cortices, and trajectories of decline in typical aging indicate that motor skills and executive function are particularly at risk in the disorder in later life. In vivo myeloarchitectonic mapping based on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) provides a unique view of gray matter structure and has the potential to elucidate abnormalities of local cortical connectivity. It has shown promise for the identification of biomarkers of disease pathogenesis in clinical studies, and it provides unique information beyond the cortical thickness measurements that have been employed in previous studies of ASD and typical aging. Myelin mapping may also be a more reliable index of neurobiological aging, given some questions about the accuracy of cortical thickness measurements. Given these properties, it may be a particularly informative measure in the context of potential accelerated decline in ASD. Intracortical myelin development and remodeling are protracted across the typical lifespan, with evidence of abnormal cortical myelination in other neuropsychiatric disorders, as well as in age-related mild cognitive impairment and dementia. In young adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) myelin content is reduced in white matter and presumably in cortical gray matter as well. However, patterns of intracortical myelination have not yet been examined in ASD at any age leaving an important gap in the current knowledge base. With the added risk of demyelination associated with aging, older adults with ASD may be the most important population to examine as they may be doubly at risk of deficits in cortical myelination. Importantly, this could have knock-on effects on cognitive and motor functions in light of myelin's role in synaptic plasticity and maintenance of intracortical circuits. The proposed fellowship project aims to bridge this gap in knowledge by investigating the age-related trajectory of intracortical myelin in middle aged to older adults with ASD and clarifying the spatial distribution of any abnormalities. Known heterogeneity in the clinical presentation and neurobiological phenotype across the autism spectrum poses a significant challenge in this research field. The proposed project includes innovative statistical approaches to help parse this heterogeneity. Intracortical myelin will be analyzed cross-sectionally using both group-wise and subject-specific approaches and with any findings confirmed with follow-up longitudinal data. This multifaceted approach will allow for a comprehensive characterization of myeloarchitectonics in adults with ASD, and also holds the potential to elucidate important links between brain structure and behavior in the disorder. Specific Aims Aim 1: Determine if intracortical myelin content and rates of age-related change differ between individuals with ASD and age-matched control participants aged 40-65 years. Hypothesis 1: Group-wise analysis will reveal decreased intracortical myelin content in ASD in association cortices of the frontal and parietal lobes. Hypothesis 2: Subject-specific analyses may reveal spatial variability across individuals in the precise brain regions demonstrating abnormalities of intracortical myelination, but with frontal and parietal regions more frequently or more heavily affected. Hypothesis 3: Both cross-sectional approaches will reveal a pattern of accelerated cortical demyelination with greater age in ASD. Aim 2: Relate local myelin content measures to cognitive and behavioral abilities that are at-risk of decline during aging, including motor skills and executive functions. Hypothesis 4: Age-related decline in domain-specific behavioral abilities will correlate with atypical patterns of intracortical myelination from Aim 1.

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to have difficulty with socio-communicative functioning and restricted or repetitive behaviors or interests, and there is considerable evidence that the majority also struggle with associated emotional problems. Speech is typically delayed or may regress, comprehension is impaired, if not at the word level, then at the level of sentences, nonverbal and verbal language are affected, and pretend play is delayed or absent, some children are nonverbal or have sparse, impoverished, poorly articulated, and grammatical speech. Objective: To assess in which interface has ASD best performance or functionality. Method: Will be evaluated 100 individuals divided into two groups: 50 individuals with diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD-group), aged 7 to 15 years old, males and females; and 50 individuals with typical development (TD-group) matched by age and sex to the ASD-group. Individuals with comorbidities and functional disabilities that would impede the completion of the task were excluded.

The main purpose is to study brain plasticity (the changes that occur in the brain through experience) in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Research suggests that during development, the brains of individuals with ASD may change in response to their experiences differently than the brains of typically developing individuals. Investigators want to understand why and how this difference may contribute to the symptoms of ASD.

The main goal of our study is to find out why some people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) do not develop verbal abilities or remain minimally-verbal throughout adolescence and adulthood. Current research focuses on investigating brain differences related to processing sounds and initiating speech in adolescents and young adults with ASD varying in language skills, compared to adolescents who do not have ASD, in order to clarify whether atypical processes of auditory perception, perceptual organization and/or neural oscillation patterns may explain why some individuals with ASD fail to acquire functional speech.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is a highly hereditary neuropsychiatric disorder. In children and adolescents worldwide, the prevalence of ASD is estimated at 0.6%. Understanding the biological mechanism of this disorder could potentially facilitate prompt, accurate and personalized therapy. The dysfunction of fronto-temporal circuitry may explain language impairment in ASD. In addition, pieces of evidence suggest that the abnormality of the cortico-striato-thalamic circuitry might be related to social deficits. However, very little is known how changes in these two circuitries are related to variation in genotypes. Previous reports on ASD using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have demonstrated alteration of brain structure. Recent advance in neuroimaging has shown that structural connectivity of a specific circuitry is superior to regional analysis in terms of higher penetrance of genetic effects and better account for behavioral variance. Therefore, it is plausible that connectivity imaging may serve as effective endophenotypes that link clinical manifestation (phenotypes) and the biological variables (genotypes). In the past five years, our lab has established world leading diffusion spectrum imaging techniques, and applied the techniques to clinical studies on ASD, schizophrenia, stroke and epilepsy. The clinical experience and technical strengths provide a strong basis for us to extend to imaging genetics, aiming to determine effective endophenotypes of ASD. Therefore, the goal of this project is to validate structural connectivity of fronto-temporal and cortico-striato-thalamic circuitries as effective imaging endophenotypes of ASD. Specifically, the investigators will achieve the goal through a series of validation. First, the investigators will demonstrate that structural connectivities in the two targeted circuitries are indeed different among groups of patients with ASD, unaffected siblings, and neurotypicals. Second, the investigators will demonstrate in neurotypicals and unaffected siblings that the altered structural connectivities related to social and language impairments are indeed different in carriers of risk genes, i.e. CNTNAP2 and SLC25A12, respectively. Last, the investigators will demonstrate in all participants that the altered structural connectivities are associated with the corresponding behavioral variances in social and language function. This two-year project is a cohort study consisting of three groups, namely patient, unaffected siblings, and control groups matched in age, gender and handedness. The patient and sibling groups consist of 20 boys each, age 10-15 years old, and the control group consists of 40 boys. The examination includes behavior assessment (IQ test, neuropsychological and clinical assessment), MRI study (structure MRI and diffusion spectrum imaging for structural connectivity) and genome scan(specifically candidate genes related to language function, i.e. SLC25A12, and to social function, i.e. CNTNAP2). In conclusion, this is the first cohort project on imaging genetics in Taiwan. The success of this project will facilitate the progress of translational neuroscience in Taiwan. The methodology of validating endophenotype will be readily extended to other psychiatric diseases.

Most people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present at least one form of challenging behavior (CB). Self-injurious, aggressive, and disruptive CBs linked with social interaction, community-based service exclusion, and a life quality reduction for people with ASD, their caregivers, and health professionals. The current study has three objectives: 1) to assess the differences in the physiological reaction of high-functioning adults with ASD and typically developed peers, using bio-signal measurements such as heart rate derived from wearable Smart Shirt (SS), 2) to learn which physiological parameters can best predict the imminent onset of a CB, and 3) to develop a system able to predict the incoming occurrence of a CB in real-time and inform the caregiver through an alert notification sent on a smartphone application. Methods and analysis: comparison between physiological parameters will carry out with two groups of 20 participants with and without ASD. Each participant will be asked to watch two five-minute videos while wearing the SS: one showing relaxing images and the other impressive human body deformities. To identify the matching between the physiological parameters variation collected by the SS and the CBs, ten participants with ASD and aggressive or disruptive CBs will be recruited. Each of these participants will wear the SS for seven consecutive days during waking hours, performing their usual daily activities. During the same seven days, the caregivers who care for the participant will fill a behavioral diary with the participant's status, reporting the times of the day in which he is quiet, agitated and the occurrence of CBs. A learning algorithm capable of predicting immediate CBs occurrence based on physiological parameter variations will be developed together with an ad hoc smartphone application. If the algorithm detects the possibility of an incoming CB, a notification will be sent to the caregiver's smartphone to inform of the possible advent of a CB, therefore enabling the implementation of the selected intervention strategy. After developing the algorithm and related smartphone application, a system efficiency proof of concept (POC) will be carried out with one participant with ASD and CB for seven days in a special school setting with healthcare professionals and teachers. A focus group including health professionals will be conducted after the POC to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the developed system.

Oxytocin (OT) is a small, naturally occurring peptide currently in clinical use to stimulate lactation in breastfeeding women. The intranasal administration of OT has recently attracted attention as a potential novel treatment in several psychiatric disorders in autism. However, given the anatomy of the nasal cavity, the current design of nasal sprays would be expected to provide an inadequate delivery of medication to the areas of the nasal cavity where direct transport into the brain via the olfactory nerve could potentially occur. OptiNose has developed an intranasal delivery device that provides improved reproducibility of nasal delivery, improved deposition to the upper posterior regions of the nasal cavity where the olfactory nerve innervates the nasal cavity. The primary objective of this study is to identify any differences between a single dose of 8 international units (IU) oxytocin, 24 IU oxytocin, and placebo delivered intranasally with the optimised OptiNose device in volunteers with Autism Spectrum Disorder. This will be measured in terms of performance on cognitive tests and physiological markers.

This 3-year proposal is a family-based cohort study to establish a representative sample of probands with ASD and their parents with well-characterized environmental, clinical phenotypes, endophenotypes, and genetic data to conduct CNV experiments and the genotype-phenotype correlations. Based on our previous findings, probands with CNVs larger than 500kb has been identified and their families will be newly recruit in the present project to reveal the origin of the CNVs and reveal the clinical feature of the families. The significant findings in specific genes will conduct pathway analysis to reveal the etiology in ASD, providing further understanding in the disease.

The purpose of this study is to assess the usability of the Janssen Autism Knowledge Engine (JAKE) as a system to monitor clinical outcomes in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (severe abnormalities in the development of many basic psychological functions that are not normal for any stage in development. These abnormalities are manifested in sustained social impairment, speech abnormalities, and peculiar motor movements).

Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) are highly debilitating developmental syndromes which core feature is social and communications disorders. Motor skill impairments are frequently described in autism, but few studies have addressed the question of their origin and their specificity. Furthermore, it is not clear whether motor problems encountered in autism are related to dyspraxia, or if they present with specific features. This project aims at deciphering the origin of motor problems encountered by children who grow-up with autism in order to propose early interventions that could influence the other developmental trajectories, such as the social one. Brain dynamics during sensori-motor learning is explored by applying magnetoencephalography (MEG) during the Bimanual Load-Lifting paradigm. Different motor processes namely: proprioceptive monitoring, use and update of a sensori-motor representation, anticipatory executive control will be correlated to brain oscillation modulation, both topographically and temporally. Two groups of children (aged between 7 and 12) are compared: a group of children with ASD and a control group of typically developing children.