Deficits in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders When Processing Multiple Objects in Dynamic Scenes

People with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) process visual information in a manner that is distinct from typically developing individuals. They may be less sensitive to people\u27s goals and, more generally, focus on visual details instead of the entire scene. To examine these differences, people with and without ASD were asked to detect changes in dynamic scenes with multiple elements. Participants viewed a brief video of a person or an inanimate object (the figure ) moving from one object to another; after a delay, they reported whether a second video was the same or different. Possible changes included the figure, the object the figure was moving from, or the object the figure was moving toward (the goal ). We hypothesized that individuals with ASD would be less sensitive to changes in scenes with people, particularly elements that might be the person\u27s goal. Alternately, people with ASD might attend to fewer elements regardless of whether the scene included a person. Our results indicate that, like controls, people with ASD noticed a change in the goal object at the end of a person\u27s movement more often than the object at the start. However, the group with ASD did not undergo the developmental improvement that was evident typically when detecting changes in both the start and end objects. This atypical development led to deficits in adults with ASD that were not specific to scenes with people or to goals. Improvements in visual processing that underlie mature representation of scenes may not occur in ASD, suggesting that late developing brain processes are affected

Cytoplasmic dynein nomenclature

A variety of names has been used in the literature for the subunits of cytoplasmic dynein complexes. Thus, there is a strong need for a more definitive consensus statement on nomenclature. This is especially important for mammalian cytoplasmic dyneins, many subunits of which are encoded by multiple genes. We propose names for the mammalian cytoplasmic dynein subunit genes and proteins that reflect the phylogenetic relationships of the genes and the published studies clarifying the functions of the polypeptides. This nomenclature recognizes the two distinct cytoplasmic dynein complexes and has the flexibility to accommodate the discovery of new subunits and isoforms

Microbial metabolites in the marine carbon cycle

One-quarter of photosynthesis-derived carbon on Earth rapidly cycles through a set of short-lived seawater metabolites that are generated from the activities of marine phytoplankton, bacteria, grazers and viruses. Here we discuss the sources of microbial metabolites in the surface ocean, their roles in ecology and biogeochemistry, and approaches that can be used to analyse them from chemistry, biology, modelling and data science. Although microbial-derived metabolites account for only a minor fraction of the total reservoir of marine dissolved organic carbon, their flux and fate underpins the central role of the ocean in sustaining life on Earth