communication disorders

Dysfunction in romantic relationships constitutes one of the most burdensome symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD). The aim of this study was to ascertain how emotional dysregulation affects behavior and relationship related feelings of women with BPD in threatening conversations with their own romantic partner. Thirty couples in which the women were diagnosed with BPD and 34 healthy control (HC) couples were videotaped while discussing personally threatening (i.e., personal failure) and relationship-threatening (i...

INTRODUCTION: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a serious mental illness that centers on the inability to effectively regulate emotions. A large amount of BPD patients engage in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). Given the NSSI contributes to serious health risks, it is important to know why some BPD patients engage in NSSI and others do not. A possible associated factor of NSSI in BPD may be alexithymia, which reflects difficulties in identifying and communicating feelings. Therefore the aim of the present study was to investigate whether NSSI was associated with alexithymia and whether this association still stood when controlling for gender and depression...

INTRODUCTION: Interventions using robot-assisted therapy may be beneficial for the social skills development of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); however, randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are lacking. The present research aims to assess the feasibility of conducting an RCT evaluating the effectiveness of a social skills intervention using Kinesics and Synchronisation in Personal Assistant Robotics (Kaspar) with children with ASD. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Forty children will be recruited...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the usability of a neuropsychological screening instrument and two observation scales of everyday behaviour to describe cognitive and functional capacity of patients with multiepisode schizophrenia and considerable care needs, who frequently refuse to participate in cognitive testing or performance-based functional measurement. SETTING: One psychiatric unit specialised in severe mental illness at the Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden...

Social communication is among the core areas of impairment for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The training of social orientation is important for improving social communication of children with ASD. In recent years, technology-assisted ASD intervention had gained momentum due to its potential advantages in terms of precision, sustainability, flexibility and cost. In this paper, we propose a closed-loop autonomous computer system, named ASOTS, for training social orientation skills to young children with ASD...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a nosological entity proposed by Petersen in 1999 with the objective of identifying an early stage of dementia. The new diagnostic criteria for dementia, both those promoted by the International Working Group (IWG) and those defined by the National Institute of Aging (NIA), subsequently introduced a new model that starts with a preclinical phase, then proceeds with a prodromal phase, and ends with a phase of dementia. The condition known as subjective cognitive disorder (SCD) is included between the preclinic and the prodromal phases...

Dendritic spines are the major sites of synaptic transmission in the central nervous system. Alterations in the strength of synaptic connections directly affect the neuronal communication, which is crucial for brain function as well as the processing and storage of information. Sleep and sleep loss bidirectionally alter structural plasticity, by affecting spine numbers and morphology, which ultimately can affect the functional output of the brain in terms of alertness, cognition, and mood. Experimental data from studies in rodents suggest that sleep deprivation may impact structural plasticity in different ways...

Aicardi syndrome is a rare neurodevelopmental disorder with agenesis of corpus callosum, chorioretinal lacunae, and infantile spasms as the main features. The outcome is in general severe, with poor cognitive development and difficult-to-treat epilepsy. In this study, we assessed the level of cognitive function of five girls with Aicardi syndrome, using normed population based tests and questionnaires. Their cognitive abilities varied from mild to profound intellectual disabilities. The more severe the epilepsy, the poorer were the cognitive skills...

Adaptogens are stress-response modifiers that increase an organism's nonspecific resistance to stress by increasing its ability to adapt and survive. The classical reductionist model is insufficiently complex to explain the mechanistic aspects of the physiological notion of "adaptability" and the adaptogenic activity of adaptogens. Here, I demonstrate that (1) the mechanisms of action of adaptogens are impossible to rationally describe using the reductionist concept of pharmacology, whereas the network pharmacology approach is the most suitable method; and (2) the principles of systems biology and pharmacological networks appear to be more suitable for conceptualizing adaptogen function and are applicable to any phytochemical...

Regulating fluctuating endogenous nitric oxide (NO) levels is necessary for proper physiological functions. Aberrant NO pathways are implicated in a number of neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease. The mechanism of NO in oxidative and nitrosative stress with pathological consequences involves reactions with reactive oxygen species (e.g. superoxide) to form the highly reactive peroxynitrite, hydrogen peroxide, hypochloride ions and hydroxyl radical. NO levels are typically regulated by endogenous nitric oxide synthases (NOS), and inflammatory iNOS is implicated in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, in which elevated NO mediates axonal degeneration and activates cyclooxygenases to provoke neuroinflammation...

PURPOSE: The aims of the present study were to identify information that individuals with whiplash associated disorders (WAD) need to know in the early stages of recovery and to establish whether there is a difference between what physiotherapists and whiplash-injured patients perceive as important information. METHOD: Forty-one participants were recruited (20 whiplash-injured patients, 21 physiotherapists). Participants were asked to provide five statements to one open-ended question about what they believe is the most important information individuals with WAD need to know in the early stages of recovery...

It is not surprising to find microbiome abnormalities present in psychiatric disorders such as depressive disorders, bipolar disorders, etc. Evolutionary pressure may provide an existential advantage to the host eukaryotic cells in that it survives in an extracellular environment containing non-self cells (e.g., bacteria). This phenomenon is both positive and negative, as with other intercellular processes. In this specific case, the phenomenal amount of information gained from combined bacterial genome could enhance communication between self and non-self cells...

BACKGROUND: Valproic acid (VPA) is the most teratogenic anticonvulsant drug in clinical use today. Children exposed prenatally to VPA have previously been shown to have dysmorphic craniofacial features, identified subjectively but not by anthropometric methods. Exposure to VPA has also been associated with an increased frequency of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). An increased cephalic index (the ratio of the cranial lateral width to the cranial anterior-posterior length) has been observed in children with ASD...

Communication deficits in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are often related to inefficient interpretation of emotional cues, which are conveyed visually through both facial expressions and body language (Apicella et al., 2012). The present study examined ASD behavioral and ERP responses to emotional expressions of anger and fear, as conveyed by the face and body. Behavioral results showed significantly faster response times for the ASD than for the typically developing (TD) group when processing fear, but not anger, in isolated face expressions, isolated body expressions, and in the integration of the two...

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that prenatal alcohol exposure (PAE) and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) increases the risk of insecure caregiver-child attachment and related negative child emotional-behavioural outcomes. Research also shows positive effects of attachment-focused interventions in preventing disrupted caregiver-child attachment relationships; however, such interventions have not been specifically adapted for children with FASD. OBJECTIVES: This paper describes the implementation, challenges, and results of a community home-based attachment intervention, Circle of Security® (COS), with preschool children affected by PAE/FASD in Manitoba, Canada...

Sensory processing alterations are highly prevalent in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Neurobiologically-based theories of ASD propose that abnormalities in the processing of temporal aspects of sensory input could underlie core symptoms of ASD. For example, rapid auditory temporal processing is critical for speech perception, and language difficulties are central to the social communication deficits defining the disorder. This study assessed visual and auditory temporal processing abilities and tested their relation to core ASD symptoms...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), including exposure and ritual prevention, is a first-line treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), but few reliable predictors of CBT outcome have been identified. Based on research in animal models, we hypothesized that individual differences in basolateral amygdala-ventromedial prefrontal cortex (BLA-vmPFC) communication would predict CBT outcome in patients with OCD. METHODS: We investigated whether BLA-vmPFC resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fc) predicts CBT outcome in patients with OCD...

Recently, a few software applications (apps) have been developed to enhance vocabulary and conceptual networks to address the needs of children with language impairments (LI), but there is no evidence about their impact and their usability in therapy contexts. Here, we try to fill this gap presenting a system aimed at improving the semantic competence and the structural knowledge of children with LI. The goal of the study is to evaluate learnability, usability, user satisfaction and quality of the interaction between the system and the children...

This study illustrates the accuracy and efficiency of using an evidence-based assessment (EBA) strategy for diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) by integrating the scale scores obtained on BASC-3 teacher and parent rating scales. The examined process used empirical diagnostic likelihood ratios (DLRs) derived from a sample of children with ADHD (N = 339) matched on demographic characteristics from the normative sample. The results show that behavioral scales of executive functioning and functional communication provided incremental utility in ADHD diagnosis...

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the fastest growing developmental disability in the United States, represents a group of neurodevelopmental disorders characterized by impaired social interaction and communication as well as restricted and repetitive behavior. The underlying cause of autism is unknown and therapy is currently limited to targeting behavioral abnormalities. Emerging studies suggest a link between mitochondrial dysfunction and ASD. Here, we review the evidence demonstrating this potential connection...