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Autism Res 2021 Mar 25. Epub 2021 Mar 25.

Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.

Much of past research has been dedicated to refining the operationalization and correlates of the broader autism phenotype (BAP) and less on how the BAP differs by socio-demographic characteristics, like age-particularly after midlife. This gap is important because other nonclinical trait-like characteristics (e.g. Read More

Eur Psychiatry 2021 Mar 3;64(1):e27. Epub 2021 Mar 3.

Cognitive Neuropsychiatry Lab, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Philipps-University Marburg/Marburg University Hospital-UKGM, Marburg, Germany.

Background: Previous case-control studies of autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have identified altered brain structure such as altered frontal and temporal cortex volumes, or decreased fractional anisotropy (FA) within the inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus in patients. It remains unclear whether subclinical autistic-like traits might also be related to variation in these brain structures.

Methods: In this study, we analyzed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data of 250 psychiatrically healthy subjects phenotyped for subclinical autistic-like traits using the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Read More

Front Psychiatry 2020 15;11:589824. Epub 2021 Jan 15.

Section of Clinical Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Movement Sciences, Research Institute LEARN!, Institute of Brain and Behavior, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Autism spectrum conditions (ASC) and schizophrenia spectrum conditions (SSC) are both characterized by changes in social-cognitive functioning. Less is known about the overlap and the differences in social-cognitive functioning when comparing individuals with subclinical levels of ASC and SSC, while studies in non-clinical samples have the benefit of avoiding confounds that are present in clinical groups. Therefore, we first examined how autistic-like experiences, positive psychotic-like experiences and the co-occurrence of both correlated with the performance on an extensive battery of social cognition tasks in young adolescents. Read More

Sci Rep 2018 11 1;8(1):16208. Epub 2018 Nov 1.

Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society, University of Udine, Udine, Italy.

Autism is associated with difficulties in predicting and understanding other people's actions. There is evidence that autistic traits are distributed across a spectrum and that subclinical forms of autistic impairments can also be measured in the typical population. To investigate the association between autistic traits and motor responses to others' actions, we quantified these traits and measured cortico-spinal excitability modulations in M1 during the observation of actions embedded in congruent, incongruent and ambiguous contexts. Read More

Psychol Med 2019 04 27;49(6):980-986. Epub 2018 Jun 27.

Visual Perception Laboratory,Department of Psychiatry,Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health,Charitéplatz 1,10117 Berlin,Germany.

Background: The atypical processing of eye contact is a characteristic hallmark of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The severity of these symptoms, however, is thought to lie on a continuum that extends into the typical population. While behavioural evidence shows that differences in social cognitive tasks in typically developed (TD) adults are related to the levels of autistic-like traits, it remains unknown whether such a relation exists for the sensitivity to direct gaze. Read More