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Query: UMLS:C0004352 (autism)
 32,579 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Recent autism and autism-related research from Gothenburg is surveyed. In indigenous families, typical autism seems no more common now than 10 years ago. Genetic factors play a part in causing autism and Asperger syndrome. Certain medical syndromes carry a relatively high risk of concomitant autistic symptoms. Evidence for non-specific brain dysfunction is often found in autism and autistic-like conditions. The search for the underlying clue to the riddle of autism may be futile. Autism might be best conceptualized as a behavioural syndrome reflecting underlying brain dysfunction which shades into other clinical syndromes. A new class of disorders of empathy is proposed.
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PMID:The Emanuel Miller Memorial Lecture 1991. Autism and autistic-like conditions: subclasses among disorders of empathy. 163 91

Autism is one of the behaviorally defined developmental disorders of brain function. It has a variety of genetic and nongenetic etiologies, with etiology being unknown in the majority of children. Boys are more frequently affected than girls. Manifest in the preschool years, autism always affects sociability, communication, and the child's repertoire of activities and interests. Autism encompasses children with a broad range of severities and a variety of other signs of brain dysfunction. These include motor signs, notably stereotypies; abnormal responses to a variety of sensory stimuli; and disorders of affect and attention. A significant proportion of autistic children experience epileptic seizures and have abnormal EEGs. Neuroimaging, preferably magnetic resonance imaging, discloses abnormalities of brain development in a minority of autistic persons. The level of intelligence may range from profound mental deficiency to giftedness. The pattern of cognitive skills is likely to be uneven, typically with better nonverbal than verbal skills. In the preschool years, all autistic children have a developmental language disorder. Verbal expression may range from total lack of language to verbosity with echolalia; comprehension and language use are invariably impaired. While there is no specific pharmacologic agent to mitigate the fundamental disorder, children may benefit from drugs to treat specific symptoms such as attention disorder and seizures. Although autistic behaviors are the consequence of a static disorder of brain function, their character changes with maturation and appropriate intervention. Communication skills and sociability remain deficient but improve in all but the most severely affected children. Outcome is a function of both innate cognitive competence and the effectiveness of early intervention focused on the development of appropriate social skills and meaningful communication. Intelligent autistic adults may be educable, employable, and able to live independently, while more severely handicapped ones require a lifelong protected environment.
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PMID:Autistic children: diagnosis and clinical features. 170 91

The relationship between cognitive deficits in high-level autism and those in learning disabilities has received little attention. To determine whether high-functioning autistic patients and individuals with severe dyslexia display different cognitive characteristics, 10 nonretarded men (mean age 26 years) with infantile autism, residual state, were compared with 15 severely dyslexic men (mean age 22 years) and 25 matched controls on a neuropsychological test battery. The two clinical groups were dissociated by a reduced digit span seen in the dyslexics and by impaired problem-solving skills (Wisconsin Card Sort and selected subtests from the Binet) seen in the autistic group. These results suggest different localization of brain dysfunction and different educational/habilitative needs.
J Autism Dev Disord 1990 Jun
PMID:Neuropsychological divergence of high-level autism and severe dyslexia. 234 17

Eleven children with infantile autism or autistic-like conditions were examined with oculomotor tests and with auditory brainstem response audiometry. Measurements of voluntary, horizontal non-predictable saccades showed that the eye motor function was abnormal in six (55 per cent) of the eleven patients. The saccades were hypometric in all six instances and the saccadic velocity was reduced in four instances. The abnormalities observed are consistent with brain dysfunction, in most cases probably indicating pontocerebellar involvement. In five instances ABR was found to be abnormal which indicates brainstem dysfunction. Oculomotor dysfunction and/or ABR abnormality was observed in eight (73 per cent) of the patients studied.
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PMID:Oculomotor findings in autistic children. 339 39

Childhood autism is a syndrome characterized by a triad of abnormalities in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication, and imaginative activity. It is clinically heterogeneous, however, and probably represents a family of syndromes, each of which is the result of a different but related type of brain dysfunction. So far, there is no direct evidence for involvement of particular brain systems, although analogies to other disorders in humans and experimental animals do allow some plausible hypotheses.
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PMID:Neuropsychology of autism. 372 77

The total population of children under 10 years in one Swedish urban area and one rural area was screened for infantile autism (IA) and autistic-like conditions (AC). A total prevalence of 6.6 per 10 000 was found, which is somewhat higher than in previous similar studies of the same region. Infantile autism accounted for two-thirds of the cases. Boys far outnumbered girls, but this was entirely accounted for by the IA group. The preponderance of autistic boys was less pronounced among the severely mentally retarded children. Mental retardation was seen in almost 90% of cases and only one child had an IQ exceeding 100; clinical and laboratory signs of brain dysfunction were also found in a majority of cases. Distribution by social class was no different in either patient group from the general population.
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PMID:Autism and autistic-like conditions in Swedish rural and urban areas: a population study. 377 17

This paper is concerned with what abnormal handedness in Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) reveals about the presence, lateralization, and severity of cerebral dysfunction in this population. From previous work, it was predicted that left-handedness would be elevated in the sample and that mixed-handedness subjects should be more impaired than those with established hand dominance. A battery of cognitive and motor tests were administered to a group of PDD children with autistic symptoms, and performance was compared for the left-handed, right-handed, and mixed-preference children. It was found that left-handers tended to do better than right-handers on all cognitive measures, while the mixed-preference children tended to be the lowest on all cognitive measures. No differences were found on motor measures. An extension of the Satz (1972) model, assuming early brain damage, was developed to explain the superiority of the left-handed children; an alternative explanation assuming anomalous lateralization patterns in the natural left-handers was also suggested.
J Autism Dev Disord 1985 Sep
PMID:Handedness and cognitive functions in pervasive developmental disorders. 403 Jun 65

Progress in the study of infantile autism over the past 10 years was reviewed in terms of classification and diagnosis, relation to other disorders, demographics, parental characteristics, genetics, intelligence, language, perceptual processes, behavioral characteristics, neurobiological, biochemical and pharmacological aspects, behavioral/educational treatment methodologies, prognosis, and theoretical considerations. This decade's research led to the now generally accepted position that infantile autism is a type of developmental disorder accompanied by severe and, to a large extent, permanent intellectual/behavioral deficits. However, its relationship to other forms of developmental disorders and to mental retardation remains to be delineated. Perceptual/cognitive/language defects appear central to the autistic syndrome, but the specific underlying mechanisms are unknown. Most studies indicate that autistic children have more signs of brain dysfunction than do normal children and about the same number as mentally retarded children. The overwhelming evidence suggests that te treatment of choice for maximal benefit to autistic children is a systematic, intrusive behavioral/educational approach. Yet, in spite of significant gains in almost all children treated, the typical prognostic picture is poor in terms of achieving self-supportive adulthood. The parents of autistic children have been found to be essentially similar to parents of children with organic brain disorders, and manifest no psychopathology which conceivably could induce the disorder. The vast majority of theoretical articles appearing in the 1970s proposed some from of neurobiological defect as the causative factor in autism. One of the major goals for future research is to undertake more extensive comparative studies on nonautistic brain dysfunctional children and autistic children that could yield cleared differential behavioral profiles and testable neurobiological hypotheses.
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PMID:Infantile autism reviewed: a decade of research. 611 76

Auditory nerve-brain stem evoked responses (ABR) have been used for many years to evaluate auditory and neurological disorders. This study is devoted to the demonstration that ABRs can also contribute to the assessment of children with developmental brain disorders, e.g. psycho-motor retardation, minimal brain dysfunction, cerebral palsy and autism. The ABR in many of these children was abnormal, providing evidence for the presence of brain damage in these children which is probably responsible for the disorder they display. Since many of these children suffered from some congenital, perinatal or neonatal insult, ABR recording was also conducted in high risk neonates and young infants. Many of these neonates and infants had abnormal ABRs and, in several, there was improvement of the ABR upon repeated testing. These findings of abnormal ABRs in children with developmental brain disorders who suffered a perinatal insult and abnormal ABRs in neonates who suffered such an insult lead to the following hypothesis: a congenital-perinatal-neonatal insult can cause, at the time of its occurrence, some form of brain damage which may be demonstrated by abnormal ABRs. The same underlying brain damage may also cause developmental brain disorders which become apparent when he is older. Therefore ABR recording during the neonatal period may contribute to the early detection of brain dysfunction in at-risk neonates and may predict the later appearance of neurological, behavioural and cognitive dysfunctions. A longitudinal experimental protocol for the testing and evaluation of this hypothesis is presented.
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PMID:Auditory nerve-brain stem responses (ABR) in children with developmental brain disorders and in high risk neonates. 618 72

Seventy-five autistic children, 52 males and 23 females, were admitted to the Iowa Autism Programme over a 3-year period. An overall male-female ratio of 2.26:1 was found, but in the patients with IQs less than 50, the ratio was 1.31:1. When IQ and receptive language functioning were considered together, significantly more females than males showed a more deviant form of autism. Autistic females were more seriously affected than autistic males; and more autistic females than males had IQs of less than 50 and evidence of cerebral dysfunction. However, when autistic males and females were closely matched in chronological age and receptive language functioning, the males and females were equally impaired in cognitive and perceptual-motor abilities. The findings suggest that the overall greater degree of morbidity in autistic females was accounted for by a significantly greater proportion of autistic males affected with a mild form of autism, whereas a significantly greater proportion of autistic females were affected with a more deviant form of autism. The findings were linked to the hypothesis of differential genetic loading in males and females.
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PMID:The development of sex differences in infantile autism. 685 Jan 75


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