Adolescent

Mindfulness and dynamic functional neural connectivity in children and adolescents

BACKGROUND: Interventions that promote mindfulness consistently show salutary effects on cognition and emotional wellbeing in adults, and more recently, in children and adolescents. However, we lack understanding of the neurobiological mechanisms …

Association Between the Probability of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Normative Sex-Related Phenotypic Diversity in Brain Structure

Importance: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is 2 to 5 times more common in male individuals than in female individuals. While the male preponderant prevalence of ASD might partially be explained by sex differences in clinical symptoms, etiological …

Impaired Communication Between the Motor and Somatosensory Homunculus Is Associated With Poor Manual Dexterity in Autism Spectrum Disorder

BACKGROUND: Fine motor skill impairments are common in autism spectrum disorder (ASD), significantly affecting quality of life. Sensory inputs reaching the primary motor cortex (M1) from the somatosensory cortex (S1) are likely involved in fine motor …

In Vivo Evidence of Reduced Integrity of the Gray-White Matter Boundary in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Atypical cortical organization and reduced integrity of the gray-white matter boundary have been reported by postmortem studies in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there are no in vivo studies that examine these particular …

On the brain structure heterogeneity of autism: Parsing out acquisition site effects with significance-weighted principal component analysis

Neuroimaging studies have reported structural and physiological differences that could help understand the causes and development of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Many of them rely on multisite designs, with the recruitment of larger samples …

Quantifying and exploring camouflaging in men and women with autism

Autobiographical descriptions and clinician observations suggest that some individuals with autism, particularly females, 'camouflage' their social communication difficulties, which may require considerable cognitive effort and lead to increased …

Sex differences in frontal lobe connectivity in adults with autism spectrum conditions

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) are more prevalent in males than females. The biological basis of this difference remains unclear. It has been postulated that one of the primary causes of ASC is a partial disconnection of the frontal lobe from …

The EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project (LEAP): clinical characterisation

BACKGROUND: The EU-AIMS Longitudinal European Autism Project (LEAP) is to date the largest multi-centre, multi-disciplinary observational study on biomarkers for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The current paper describes the clinical characteristics …

Improving effect size estimation and statistical power with multi-echo fMRI and its impact on understanding the neural systems supporting mentalizing

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research is routinely criticized for being statistically underpowered due to characteristically small sample sizes and much larger sample sizes are being increasingly recommended. Additionally, various …

Frontal networks in adults with autism spectrum disorder

It has been postulated that autism spectrum disorder is underpinned by an 'atypical connectivity' involving higher-order association brain regions. To test this hypothesis in a large cohort of adults with autism spectrum disorder we compared the …