Investigating sensory response to physical discomfort in children with autism spectrum disorder using near-infrared spectroscopy.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Schudlo LC
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8415580 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neuro-developmental disorder, characterized by impairments in one's capacity for joint attention. In this study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was applied to study the differences in activation and functional connectivity in the prefrontal cortex between children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) children. 21 ASD and 20 TD children were recruited to perform joint and non-joint attention tasks. Compared with TD children, children with ASD showed reduced activation and atypical functional connectivity pattern in the prefrontal cortex during joint attention. The atypical development of left prefrontal cortex might play an important role in social cognition defects of children with ASD.
| S-EPMC4361426 | biostudies-other
Project description:BackgroundEarly identification and treatment of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) improves outcomes, but specific evidence needed to individualize treatment recommendations is lacking. Biomarkers that could be routinely measured within the clinical setting could potentially transform clinical care for patients with ASD. This demonstration project employed collection of biomarker data during regular autism specialty clinical visits and explored the relationship of biomarkers with clinical ASD symptoms.MethodsEighty-three children with ASD, aged 5-10 years, completed a multi-site feasibility study integrating the collection of biochemical (blood serotonin, urine melatonin sulfate excretion) and clinical (head circumference, dysmorphology exam, digit ratio, cognitive and behavioral function) biomarkers during routine ASD clinic visits. Parents completed a demographic survey and the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community. Cognitive function was determined by record review. Data analysis utilized Wilcoxon two-sample tests and Spearman correlations.ResultsParticipants were 82% male, 63% White, 19% Hispanic, with a broad range of functioning. Group means indicated hyperserotonemia. In a single regression analysis adjusting for race and median household income, higher income was associated with higher levels of blood serotonin and urine melatonin sulfate excretion levels (p = 0.004 and p = 0.04, respectively). Melatonin correlated negatively with age (p = 0.048) and reported neurologic problems (p = 0.02). Dysmorphic status correlated with higher reported stereotyped behavior (p = 0.02) and inappropriate speech (p = 0.04).ConclusionThis demonstration project employed collection of multiple biomarkers, allowed for examination of associations between biochemical and clinical measures, and identified several findings that suggest direction for future studies. This clinical research model has promise for integrative biomarker research in individuals with complex, heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD.
| S-EPMC6687766 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundAtypical reactions to the sensory environment are often reported in autistic individuals, with a high degree of variability across the sensory modalities. These sensory differences have been shown to promote challenging behaviours and distress in autistic individuals and are predictive of other functions including motor, social, and cognitive abilities. Preliminary research suggests that specific sensory differences may cluster together within individuals creating discrete sensory phenotypes. However, the manner in which these sensory differences cluster, and whether the resulting phenotypes are associated with specific cognitive and social challenges is unclear.MethodsShort sensory profile data from 599 autistic children and adults between the ages of 1 and 21 years were subjected to a K-means cluster analysis. Analysis of variances compared age, adaptive behaviour, and traits associated with autism, attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive and compulsive disorder across the resultant clusters.ResultsA five-cluster model was found to minimize error variance and produce five sensory phenotypes: (1) sensory adaptive, (2) generalized sensory differences, (3) taste and smell sensitivity, (4) under-responsive and sensation seeking, and (5) movement difficulties with low energy. Age, adaptive behaviour, and traits associated with autism, attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive and compulsive disorder were found to differ significantly across the five phenotypes.LimitationsThe results were based on parent-report measures of sensory processing, adaptive behaviour, traits associated with autism, attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive and compulsive disorder, which may limit the generalizability of the findings. Further, not all measures are standardized, or psychometrically validated with an autism population. Autistic individuals with an intellectual disability were underrepresented in this sample. Further, as these data were obtained from established records from a large provincial database, not all measures were completed for all individuals.ConclusionsThese findings suggest that sensory difficulties in autistic individuals can be clustered into sensory phenotypes, and that these phenotypes are associated with behavioural differences. Given the large degree of heterogeneity in sensory difficulties seen in the autistic population, these sensory phenotypes represent an effective way to parse that heterogeneity and create phenotypes that may aid in the development of effective treatments and interventions for sensory difficulties.
| S-EPMC8507349 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The differential diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) based solely on symptomatic and behavioral assessments can be difficult, even for experts. Thus, the development of a neuroimaging marker that differentiates ASDs from ADHD would be an important contribution to this field. We assessed the differences in prefrontal activation between adults with ASDs and ADHD using an entirely non-invasive and portable neuroimaging tool, near-infrared spectroscopy. This study included 21 drug-naïve adults with ASDs, 19 drug-naïve adults with ADHD, and 21 healthy subjects matched for age, sex, and IQ. Oxygenated hemoglobin concentration changes in the prefrontal cortex were assessed during a stop signal task and a verbal fluency task. During the stop signal task, compared to the control group, the ASDs group exhibited lower activation in a broad prefrontal area, whereas the ADHD group showed underactivation of the right premotor area, right presupplementary motor area, and bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Significant differences were observed in the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex between the ASDs and ADHD groups during the stop signal task. The leave-one-out cross-validation method using mean oxygenated hemoglobin changes yielded a classification accuracy of 81.4% during inhibitory control. These results were task specific, as the brain activation pattern observed during the verbal fluency task did not differentiate the ASDs and ADHD groups significantly. This study therefore provides evidence of a difference in left ventrolateral prefrontal activation during inhibitory control between adults with ASDs and ADHD. Thus, near-infrared spectroscopy may be useful as an auxiliary tool for the differential diagnosis of such developmental disorders.
| S-EPMC3842411 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMusic therapy has been shown to improve communication in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), but little is known about how different types of music and images affect hemodynamic changes in the frontal lobe of the brain in children with ASD. This study aims to use functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to explore the effects of different types of visual music on different brain regions of oxyhemoglobin (HbO) in the prefrontal lobe of children with ASD and children with typical development (TD), so as to provide evidence for better application of different types of visual music in the treatment of children with ASD.MethodsSeven children with ASD and nine matched children with TD were selected. Changes in HbO in their prefrontal lobes were determined by fNIRS after resting states and 12 different types of visual music tasks.Results(I) Intra-group comparison: the influence of different types of light and music on ∆HbO in ROI (zone F) of ASD children is different, the activation degree shows that red light & positive music is less than green light & neutral music, red light & positive music is less than blue light & negative music, and there is no difference between green light & neutral music and blue light & negative music. (II) Comparison between groups: Visual musical tasks 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 positively activated HbO in the prefrontal B and E regions of the brain in children with ASD and negatively activated HbO in TD children. Visual musical tasks 5, 9, 10, and 12 negatively activated HbO in the prefrontal F regions of the brain in children with ASD and positively activated HbO in TD children.ConclusionsWhen the two groups of children received the same visual music task, the changes of HbO in different regions of the prefrontal lobe were different; The effects of different types of visual music on the frontal lobe of the brain in children with ASD are inconsistent.
| S-EPMC9986789 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairment in social communication and the presence of restricted and repetitive behaviors and interests. Executive function impairment is reportedly partially responsible for these symptoms. Executive function includes planning, flexibility, and inhibitory control. Although planning and flexibility in ASD have been consistently reported as atypical, the atypicality of inhibitory control remains controversial. As most previous studies have used nonsocial stimuli to investigate inhibitory control in ASD, the effects of socially relevant information on the inhibitory control system in individuals with ASD remain unclear. Therefore, we developed a go/no-go task with gaze stimuli and measured hemodynamic responses in the right prefrontal cortex (PFC), involved in inhibitory processing in both typically developing (TD) children and children with ASD, using functional near-infrared spectroscopy. Direct gaze induced commission errors to similar extents in both groups. Contrary to the behavioral responses, neural activation in the right PFC was modulated by gaze direction only in the TD group. These findings suggest that the gaze-processing mechanisms in the prefrontal region may be affected by atypical gaze processing in other brain regions during an inhibitory control task with socially relevant information in ASD.
| S-EPMC6123570 | biostudies-literature
Project description:We developed a series of near infrared (NIR) cyanine dyes to study dichromic fluorescence phenomenon, which provides new protocols for in vivo optical imaging. Preliminary spectroscopic studies show that dichromic fluorescence correlates with structural symmetry. This feature suggests the potential use of dichromic fluorescent molecules to study biological processes that can alter the structural symmetry of the molecular probes.
| S-EPMC3010286 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The combination of economic games and human neuroimaging presents the possibility of using economic probes to identify biomarkers for quantitative features of healthy and diseased cognition. These probes span a range of important cognitive functions, but one new use is in the domain of reciprocating social exchange with other humans - a capacity perturbed in a number of psychopathologies. We summarize the use of a reciprocating exchange game to elicit neural and behavioral signatures for subjects diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Furthermore, we outline early efforts to capture features of social exchange in computational models and use these to identify quantitative behavioral differences between subjects with ASD and matched controls. Lastly, we summarize a number of subsequent studies inspired by the modeling results, which suggest new neural and behavioral signatures that could be used to characterize subtle deficits in information processing during interactions with other humans.
| S-EPMC3436718 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundSleep problems are common in children with autism spectrum disorder (autism). There is sparse research to date to examine whether insomnia in people with autism is related to autism genetics or insomnia genetics. Moreover, there is a lack of research examining whether circadian-rhythm related genes share potential pathways with autism.AimsTo address this research gap, we tested whether polygenic scores of insomnia or autism are related to risk of insomnia in people with autism, and whether the circadian genes are associated with insomnia in people with autism.Methods and proceduresWe tested these questions using the phenotypically and genotypically rich MSSNG dataset (N = 1049) as well as incorporating in the analyses data from the Vanderbilt University Biobank (BioVU) (N = 349).Outcomes and resultsIn our meta-analyzed sample, there was no evidence of associations between the polygenic scores (PGS) for insomnia and a clinical diagnosis of insomnia, or between the PGS of autism and insomnia. We also did not find evidence of a greater burden of rare and disruptive variation in the melatonin and circadian genes in individuals with autism and insomnia compared to individuals with autism without insomnia.Conclusions and implicationsOverall, we did not find evidence for strong effects of genetic scores influencing sleep in people with autism, however, we cannot rule out the possibility that smaller genetic effects may play a role in sleep problems. Our study indicated the need for a larger collection of data on sleep problems and sleep quality among people with autism.
| S-EPMC10068748 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by heterogeneous clinical phenotypes. Patients often experience abnormal sensory perception, which may further affect the ASD core phenotype, significantly and adversely affecting their quality of life. However, biomarkers for the diagnosis of ASD sensory perception abnormality are currently elusive. We sought to identify potential biomarkers related to ASD sensory perception abnormality to construct a prediction model that could facilitate the early identification of and screening for ASD. Differentially expressed genes in ASD were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database and were screened for genes related to sensory perception abnormality. After enrichment analysis, the random forest method was used to identify disease-characteristic genes. A prediction model was constructed with an artificial neural network. Finally, the results were validated using data from the dorsal root ganglion, cerebral cortex, and striatum of the BTBR T+ Itpr3tf/J (BTBR) ASD mouse model. A total of 1869 differentially expressed genes in ASD were screened, among which 16 genes related to sensory perception abnormality were identified. According to enrichment analysis, these 16 genes were mainly related to actin, cholesterol metabolism, and tight junctions. Using random forest, 15 disease-characteristic genes were screened for model construction. The area under the curve of the training set validation result was 0.999, and for the model function validation, the result was 0.711, indicating high accuracy. The validation of BTBR mice confirmed the reliability of using these disease-characteristic genes for prediction of ASD. In conclusion, we developed a highly accurate model for predicting ASD sensory perception abnormality from 15 disease-characteristic genes. This model provides a new method for the early identification and diagnosis of ASD sensory perception abnormality.
| S-EPMC9916460 | biostudies-literature