Serious Games in Autism Spectrum Disorder - An Example of Personalised Design

Over the last decade, several studies evaluated the use of Serious Games as tools to encourage the development of communication, the process of learning, and social behaviour in people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) alongside traditional therapeutic approaches. The proposed study intends to employ and rate the use of Serious Games to create personalised interactive environments aimed to improve the learning of educational content in children with ASD. In particular, a multidisciplinary team supported the design and development of the serious game to allow a personalised approach

Personalized training via serious game to improve daily living skills in pediatric patients with autism spectrum disorder

The majority of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit difficulties in social communication and behavior, which hinder their learning capability, amid others. Among technological solutions for people with ASD, serious games are frequently used to enhance learning of specific skills and instructional contents. However, because of heterogeneity in applications and game design, few studies have investigated their use in training daily activities. This paper presents a 3D personalized serious game we developed and validated to help ASD patients practice with shopping activities. Personalized training is paramount in people with ASD, thus several elements of this game were personalized to improve engagement and therefore the effectiveness of the virtual training. In order to assess the validity of the game, ten subjects (age 11.9 2.7, 20% female) with ASD played ten sessions of the serious game, once per week. The participants underwent a real-life experience pre- and post-training in a real-life supermarket. Changes in daily living skills among participants were evaluated through specific tools: a form based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health for Children and Youth; and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale II. Significant improvements (p<0.05) were detected in the main skills trained with the serious game, especially in learning the shopping procedure, directing attention, and problem-solving skills. These findings suggest that personalized serious games can represent a prominent tool to enhance daily living skills, but future work should clinically validate their efficacy

Effect of initial levothyroxine dose on neurodevelopmental and growth outcomes in children with congenital hypothyroidism

We designed a multicentre open prospective randomized trial to evaluate the risk-benefit profile of two different initial treatment schemes with levothyroxine (L-T4), 10-12.5 μg/kg/day vs 12.6-15 μg/kg/day, on growth and neurodevelopmental outcomes in children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) detected by neonatal screening to identify the best range dose to achieve optimal neurocognitive development

Gut Microbiota Features in Young Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Proliferation and/or depletion of clusters of specific bacteria regulate intestinal functions and may interfere with neuro-immune communication and behavior in patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Consistently, qualitative and quantitative alteration of bacterial metabolites may functionally affect ASD pathophysiology. Up to date, age-restricted cohort studies, that may potentially help to identify specific microbial signatures in ASD, are lacking. We investigated the gut microbiota (GM) structure and fecal short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) levels in a cohort of young children (2–4 years of age) with ASD, with respect to age-matched neurotypical healthy controls. Strong increase of Bacteroidetes and Proteobacteria and decrease of Actinobacteria was observed in these patients. Among the 91 OTUs whose relative abundance was altered in ASD patients, we observed a striking depletion of Bifidobacterium longum, one of the dominant bacteria in infant GM and, conversely, an increase of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii, a late colonizer of healthy human gut and a major butyrate producer. High levels of F. prausnitzii were associated to increase of fecal butyrate levels within normal range, and over representation of KEGG functions related to butyrate production in ASD patients. Here we report unbalance of GM structure with a shift in colonization by gut beneficial bacterial species in ASD patients as off early childhood