Time Magazine Article
https://time.com/6299599/
Perna et al - Autism and Vision, A Meta Analysis
- Association between Autism and vision problems. A systematic review and meta-analysis
- Visual impairments, including refractive errors and reduced convergence, are more prevalent in autism compared to the general population.
- Sensory abnormalities, such as altered visual perception and global motion perception deficits, are commonly observed in autistics
- There is a need for further research to understand the relationship between visual impairments and autism, as well as the impact of these in Autistics.
Simultaneity Window
If stimuli from different modalities fall within the SW, they are likely to be perceptually integrated, whereas if they fall outside the SW, they may be perceived as separate events.
- Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ): participants are presented with 2 stimuli, one in each sensory modality (e.g., a flash of light and a beep), and they have to determine the order in which the stimuli occurred.
- Simultaneity Judgment (SJ): Participants are presented with 2 stimuli, from different modalities, and they have to judge whether the stimuli were perceived as simultaneous or not.
- Temporal Alignment Task: Participants are presented with a stimulus in one modality and have to adjust the timing of a stimulus in the other modality until it is perceived as synchronous with the first stimulus. This helps in determining the temporal window of integration.
- Temporal Recalibration Task: Participants are exposed to a consistent asynchrony between stimuli from different modalities over a period of time. Following this exposure, their perception of simultaneity is tested to see if it has been recalibrated.
Psychophysics and Autism
Psychophysical experiments often involve participants making judgments or providing responses to stimuli under controlled conditions. These experiments use psychophysical techniques to measure and analyze perceptual thresholds, discrimination abilities, response biases, and other aspects of sensory perception.
Some common psychophysical methods and measures include:
- Threshold determination: Identifying the minimum or maximum level of a stimulus that can be detected or discriminated.
- Scaling: Estimating subjective perceptions using rating scales or magnitude estimation.
- Difference thresholds: Assessing the smallest detectable difference between two stimuli.
- Response time measures: Examining the speed of processing or decision-making in response to stimuli.
Psychophysics has contributed to our understanding of sensory perception, including concepts such as Weber's Law, Stevens' Power Law, and Fechner's Law. It has applications in various fields, such as vision science, auditory perception, psychopharmacology, and the study of human factors in design and technology.
- Sensory processing differences at various levels, such as visual, auditory, and tactile domains. Researchers have utilized psychophysical methods to measure thresholds, discrimination abilities, and response biases related to sensory perception. This helps in identifying specific sensory sensitivities, hypo- or hyper responsiveness, and atypical processing patterns in individuals with autism
- Perceptual integration and binding of perceptual features, such as color, motion, or shape, in autistics. By examining how autistics perceive and integrate different sensory information, researchers gain insights into potential difficulties in integrating and perceiving coherent perceptual representations.
- Face and emotion perception studies investigate perceptual thresholds, discrimination abilities, and biases related to facial features, expressions, and emotional cues. They can provide insights into the specific challenges in perceiving and interpreting social cues.
- Multisensory processing: Psychophysics has been utilized to explore how autistics integrate information from multiple sensory modalities. By measuring sensory integration and cross-modal processing abilities, researchers gain a better understanding of how individuals combine information from different sensory channels, which can contribute to their overall perceptual experiences.
Review v Meta Analysis
A meta-analysis is a specific type of research synthesis that involves combining and analyzing quantitative data from multiple studies to generate more robust conclusions. Researchers identify relevant studies, extract relevant data from each study, and statistically analyze the combined data to derive overall effect sizes or estimates of the relationship between variables. Meta-analyses often include a systematic review of the literature as a first step to identify relevant studies for inclusion.
Suicide Mortality in Autistics
Trait Anxiety vs State Anxiety
MBNCA Connectome Dataset
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.03.10.532036v1
Schwartzman 2023: suicidal behaviors in autistic adolescents
Key Takeaways
- Early adolescent autistics (total sample 239, 138 autistic) at higher risk for suicidal ideation and NSSI (non suicidal self-injurious behaviors) compared to non-autistics.
- 20% autistics reported suicide ideation on self-report questionnaires but not to a study psychiatrist (via the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale)
- No sex based differences seen.
- What are the underlying factors that contribute to the higher risk of suicidal thoughts / behaviors and NSSI in autistic early adolescents?
- How can clinicians improve their ability to detect these behaviors given the discrepancies between self-report and clinician-rated measures?
- What interventions or treatments are effective in reducing the risk of these behaviors in autistic youth?
- How can parents, caregivers, and educators better support autistic youth who may be at risk ?
- What are the long-term outcomes for autistic youth with suicidal thoughts/behaviors and NSSI?
Schwartzman JM, Muscatello R, Corbett BA. Assessing Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors and Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in Autistic and Non-Autistic Early Adolescents Using the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 53.2 (2023): 559-570. doi:10.1177/136236132311621. PMID 30938385
Media Mention
McGlade et al 2023: Effectiveness of Early Intervention Therapies
My take: If early childhood therapy was so "effective", then the thousands of kids who have had massive amounts of therapy all through childhood (starting with early intervention) would have "RECOVERED" may times over. Why are my challenges still significant - ie: all that therapy did not make a dent. Currently there is no such thing as gold-standard childhood therapy. Most autism therapy is hit-or-miss, at any age. Its just $$$$ spent on trial and error. Lots of careers and promotions.
Recently there was a twitter post pointing out that since were were no readily available "statistics" (referring to it as a "cool autism fact") showing numbers of the more significantly impacted adult autistics meant that numbers of this group must be overstated. Others in the thread questioned if adult autistics who did not not speak, even existed, since that autistic posting had learned to speak at age 3. This an irresponsible statement and an erasure of the huge number of non-speaking or minimal verbal adults who need to be part of the autism solutions.
Onto the paper.
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- Limited evidence to recommend very early interventions for infants and toddlers with autism.
- Limited impact of early intervention for at-risk infants/toddlers (by age 3.
- No significant treatment effects for autism symptoms, cognitive outcomes, receptive/expressive language. Even neurocognitive outcomes (EEG and eye tracking) were inconsistent.
- Gold-standard early intervention is yet to be developed. Future treatment will need to include novel and individualized intervention targets alongside the targeting of parental responsiveness.
- What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice and policy related to early intervention for autism?
- What are the long-term outcomes of very early interventions for infants and toddlers with autism beyond age 3 years?
- What are the ethical considerations related to intervening in infants and toddlers at increased likelihood of autism dx, and how can these be addressed in future research and practice?
Neurexins and Autism
A few reasons why neurexin genes might be associated with autism.
- disrupt in function of synapses (& communication between neurons), which could contribute to the autistic social and communication challenges
- disruption in brain development as neurexin genes expressed early in brain development, and play important roles in the formation of neural circuits.
- impact on function of other genes as they interact with a number of other proteins.
A Highly Sensitive Person
One big vagary
Nothing standard, fractured light in a prism.
Can we conclude then, so far…..
… no evidence in any evidence really
….no clues. What’s going on in this gallery.
inexplicable me. I continue to be one big vagary.