Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders is now a fully open access journal

AbstractWith the publication of the first articles of this 2012 volume, the Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders enters the exciting world of open access publishing. The Journal will now be published by BioMed Central, (part of Springer Science+Business Media) as a fully open access journal. This change will mean that all articles will be made freely and permanently accessible online immediately upon publication, will be available to readers throughout the world without subscription charges or registration barriers, and be indexed in both PubMed and PubMed Central

Abnormal processing of social information from faces in autism

Autism has been thought to be characterized, in part, by dysfunction in emotional and social cognition, but the pathology of the underlying processes and their neural substrates remain poorly understood. Several studies have hypothesized that abnormal amygdala function may account for some of the impairments seen in autism, specifically, impaired recognition of socially relevant information from faces. We explored this issue in eight high-functioning subjects with autism in four experiments that assessed recognition of emotional and social information, primarily from faces. All tasks used were identical to those previously used in studies of subjects with bilateral amygdala damage, permitting direct comparisons. All subjects with autism made abnormal social judgments regarding the trustworthiness of faces; however, all were able to make normal social judgments from lexical stimuli, and all had a normal ability to perceptually discriminate the stimuli. Overall, these data from subjects with autism show some parallels to those from neurological subjects with focal amygdala damage. We suggest that amygdala dysfunction in autism might contribute to an impaired ability to link visual perception of socially relevant stimuli with retrieval of social knowledge and with elicitation of social behavior

Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders reviewer acknowledgement 2012

Contributing reviewers The editors of Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders would like to thank all of our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in volume 4 (2012). High quality and timely reviews are critical to the overall quality of the journal. We are committed to providing a unique and important outlet for scholarship regarding neurodevelopmental disorders and are indebted to the outstanding reviewers who have contributed their time over the last year in helping us to reach this goal

Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders reviewer acknowledgement 2012

Contributing reviewers The editors of Journal of Neurodevelopmental Disorders would like to thank all of our reviewers who have contributed to the journal in volume 4 (2012). High quality and timely reviews are critical to the overall quality of the journal. We are committed to providing a unique and important outlet for scholarship regarding neurodevelopmental disorders and are indebted to the outstanding reviewers who have contributed their time over the last year in helping us to reach this goal

The Impact of COVID-19 on Individuals With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Clinical and Scientific Priorities

To the Editor: The goal of this communication is to provide clinicians and behavioral scientists with a scoping perspective on the diverse array of effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in the United States. It is our hope that this will stimulate subsequent scientific and advocacy efforts to ameliorate the disproportionate burden of the pandemic on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Evidence for three subtypes of repetitive behavior in autism that differ in familiality and association with other symptoms

Restricted repetitive behaviors (RRBs) are a core feature of autism and consist of a variety of behaviors, ranging from motor stereotypies to complex circumscribed interests. The objective of the current study was to examine the structure of RRBs in autism using relevant items from the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised in a sample of 316 individuals with autistic disorder

Neuropsychological Profile of Autism and the Broad Autism Phenotype

Context: Multiple articles describe a constellation of language, personality, and social-behavioral features present in relatives that mirror the symptom domains of autism, but are much milder in expression. Studies of this broad autism phenotype (BAP) may provide a potentially important complementary approach for detecting the genes causing autism and defining associated neural circuitry by identifying more refined phenotypes that can be measured quantitatively in both affected and unaffected individuals and that are tied to functioning in particular regions of the brain. Objective: To gain insight into neuropsychological features that index genetic liability to autism. Design: Case-control study. Setting: The general community. Participants: Thirty-eight high-functioning individuals with autism and parents of autistic individuals, both with and without the BAP (n = 83), as well as control individuals. Main Outcome Measures: A comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tasks assessing social cognition, executive function, and global vs local processing strategies (central coherence). Results: Both individuals with autism and parents with the BAP differed from controls on measures of social cognition, with performance in the other 2 domains being more similar to controls. Conclusions: Data suggest that the social cognitive domain may be an important target for linking phenotype to cognitive process to brain structure in autism and may ultimately provide insight into the genes involved in autism