Reduced face identity aftereffects in relatives of children with autism.

Autism is a pervasive developmental condition with complex aetiology. To aid the discovery of genetic mechanisms, researchers have turned towards identifying potential endophenotypes - subtle neurobiological or neurocognitive traits present in individuals with autism and their "unaffected" relatives. Previous research has shown that relatives of individuals with autism exhibit face processing atypicalities, which are similar in nature albeit of lesser degree, to those found in children and adults with autism. Yet very few studies have examined the underlying mechanisms responsible for such atypicalities. Here, we investigated whether atypicalities in adaptive norm-based coding of faces are present in relatives of children with autism, similar to those previously reported in children with autism. To test this possibility, we administered a face identity aftereffect task in which adaptation to a particular face biases perception towards the opposite identity, so that a previously neutral face (i.e., the average face) takes on the computationally opposite identity. Parents and siblings of individuals with autism showed smaller aftereffects compared to parents and siblings of typically developing children, especially so when the adapting stimuli were located further away from the average face. In addition, both groups showed stronger aftereffects for adaptors far from the average than for adaptors closer to the average. These results suggest that, in relatives of children with autism, face-coding mechanism are similar (i.e., norm-based) but less efficient than in relatives of typical children. This finding points towards the possibility that diminished adaptive mechanisms might represent a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism

Early benralizumab for eosinophilic myocarditis in eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis

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Renal parenchymal thickness is both related to vascular endothelial growth factor and intrarenal stiffness in systemic sclerosis

Questa Letter con dati originali dimostra che nei pazienti sclerodermia lo spessore parenchima, valutato ecograficamente, dipende sia dalla stiffess intrarenale , valutata mediante Doppler delle arterie renali, che dall'angiogenesi, valutata mediante il dosaggio sferico del vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF). Lo spessore parenchima renale nella sclerosi sistemica mostra una correlazione lineare negativa sia con l'indice di resistenza renale che con l dosaggio sferico del VEGF. E' ipotizzabile che la ridotta neoangiogenesi e l'aumento degli indici di resistenza renale siano la causa di una riduzione dello spessore parenchima renale

Skin perfusion of hands is associated with parasympathetic activity in systemic sclerosis

Changes in the activity or responsiveness of neuroendothelial mecha-nisms may trigger vascular injury with im-balance of angiogenesi

Ensemble perception of emotions in autistic and typical children and adolescents.

Ensemble perception, the ability to assess automatically the summary of large amounts of information presented in visual scenes, is available early in typical development. This ability might be compromised in autistic children, who are thought to present limitations in maintaining summary statistics representations for the recent history of sensory input. Here we examined ensemble perception of facial emotional expressions in 35 autistic children, 30 age- and ability-matched typical children and 25 typical adults. Participants received three tasks: a) an ‘ensemble’ emotion discrimination task; b) a baseline (single-face) emotion discrimination task; and c) a facial expression identification task. Children performed worse than adults on all three tasks. Unexpectedly, autistic and typical children were, on average, indistinguishable in their precision and accuracy on all three tasks. Computational modelling suggested that, on average, autistic and typical children used ensemble-encoding strategies to a similar extent; but ensemble perception was related to non-verbal reasoning abilities in autistic but not in typical children. Eye-movement data also showed no group differences in the way children attended to the stimuli. Our combined findings suggest that the abilities of autistic and typical children for ensemble perception of emotions are comparable on average. Keywords: Ensemble perception, Autism, Summary statistics, Facial expressions, Emotion

Hepatitis B Core-Related Antigen as Surrogate Biomarker of Intrahepatic Hepatitis B Virus Covalently-Closed-Circular DNA in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis B: A Meta-Analysis

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) covalently-closed-circular (ccc)DNA is the key molecule responsible for viral persistence within infected hepatocytes. The evaluation of HBV cccDNA is crucial for the management of patients with chronic HBV infection and for the personalization of treatment. However, the need for liver biopsy is the principal obstacle for the assessment of intrahepatic HBV cccDNA. In the last decade, several studies have investigated the performance of hepatitis B core-related antigen (HBcrAg) as a surrogate of HBV cccDNA amount in the liver. In this meta-analysis, we collected 14 studies (1271 patients) investigating the correlation between serum HBcrAg and intrahepatic HBV cccDNA. Serum HBcrAg showed a high correlation with intrahepatic HBV cccDNA (r = 0.641, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.510–0.743, p < 0.001). In a head-to-head comparison, we observed that the performance of HBcrAg was significantly superior to that of hepatitis B surface antigen (r = 0.665 vs. r = 0.475, respectively, p < 0.001). Subgroup analysis showed that the correlation between HBcrAg and intrahepatic HBV cccDNA was high, both in hepatitis B e antigen-positive and -negative patients (r = 0.678, 95% CI 0.403–0.840, p < 0.001, and r = 0.578, 95% CI 0.344–0.744, p < 0.001, respectively). In conclusion, the measurement of serum HBcrAg qualifies as a reliable non-invasive surrogate for the assessment of an intrahepatic HBV cccDNA reservoir

Reprint of “Investigating ensemble perception of emotions in autistic and typical children and adolescents”

Ensemble perception, the ability to assess automatically the summary of large amounts of information presented in visual scenes, is available early in typical development. This ability might be compromised in autistic children, who are thought to present limitations in maintaining summary statistics representations for the recent history of sensory input. Here we examined ensemble perception of facial emotional expressions in 35 autistic children, 30 age- and ability-matched typical children and 25 typical adults. Participants received three tasks: a) an ‘ensemble’ emotion discrimination task; b) a baseline (single-face) emotion discrimination task; and c) a facial expression identification task. Children performed worse than adults on all three tasks. Unexpectedly, autistic and typical children were, on average, indistinguishable in their precision and accuracy on all three tasks. Computational modelling suggested that, on average, autistic and typical children used ensemble-encoding strategies to a similar extent; but ensemble perception was related to non-verbal reasoning abilities in autistic but not in typical children. Eye-movement data also showed no group differences in the way children attended to the stimuli. Our combined findings suggest that the abilities of autistic and typical children for ensemble perception of emotions are comparable on average. Keywords: Ensemble perception, Autism, Summary statistics, Facial expressions, Emotion