Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interaction and reciprocal communication. ASD affects about 1% of the general population and is associated with substantial disability and economic loss. A variety of approaches to improve the core deficits and lives of people with ASD have been developed, including behavioral, developmental, educational, and medical interventions. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a neuro-psychomotor approach in children affected by ASD. Methods: The sample consisted of 84 children (66 males, mean age 56.9 ± 15.8 months) affected by ASD assessed between September 2020 to March 2021. The trained therapist was asked to complete the ASD behavior inventory (ASDBI) test at baseline (T0) (September 2020) and after six months (T1) (March 2021) to assess the child’s evolution over the observational period. The study was carried out in southern Italy (Campania Region). Results: ASD children showed a significant improvement for AUTISM composite after 6 months of neuro-psychomotor treatment (T1) compared to baseline (65.4 ± 12.2 vs. 75.8 ± 11.5, p < 0.0001). In particular, significant changes were observed for such domains as the problems of excitability (ECCIT), aggression (AGG), behaviors in social relations (RELSOC), expressive (all p < 0.001), sense/perceptual contact modes (SENS) (p = 0.0007), ritualisms/resistance to changes (RIT) (p = 0.0002), pragmatic/social problems (PPSOC) (p = 0.0009), specific fears (FEARS) (p = 0.01), and learning and memory (AMLR) (p = 0.0007). No differences for the domains Semantic/pragmatic problems (PPSEM) and language (LESP) were found. Conclusions: Our preliminary results suggest the usefulness of the neuro-psychomotor treatment in children with ASD. Although promising, these findings need to be tested further to better understand the long-term effects of this specific type of approach.
IntroductionClinical studies on cognitive effects of second generation antipsychotics produced disappointing findings probably due to the heterogeneity of the clinical populations under investigation, as well as to poor sensitivity of neurocognitive indices. Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) provide a functional measure of electrical brain activity time-locked to discrete stages of information processing. They have been widely used as putative biological markers of cognitive abnormalities in schizophrenia and represent useful indices in the investigation of the cognitive effects of psychotropic drugs.ObjectivesThe present study investigated the effect of risperidone, haloperidol and placebo on N1 and P3 in male healthy subjects.MethodsERPs were recorded during a three-tone oddball task in which target, standard and rare-nontarget tones were randomly presented. Subjects had to press a button when hearing a target tone. Amplitude and topography of the ERP component maps at peak latencies were compared across conditions. If a significant drug effect was obtained, changes in the cortical sources of the corresponding ERP component were analyzed using Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (LORETA).ResultsThe amplitude of N1 for attended stimuli and of P3 for rare-nontargets (P3a) was significantly increased only by risperidone. No significant change was observed in overall topographic features and in LORETA cortical sources of the same components. No significant drug effect was demonstrated for the latency of all the investigated components and for P3b amplitude.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that risperidone has a favorable effect on early attention processes and automatic attention allocation.
IntroductionSeveral factor analytic studies have shown than anhedonia and avolition are included in the same factor, suggesting that motivational deficits in schizophrenia are related to a reduced experience of pleasure; however other studies have not confirmed this hypothesis. More recently, it has been hypothesized that avolition is related to a difficulty in anticipating reward value and\or regulating behavior on the basis of the associations between value and action.Objectives/AimsThis study is aimed to verify an impairment of reward anticipation in patients with deficit schizophrenia (DS), but not in those with non-deficit schizophrenia (NDS) and its association with primary negative symptoms, using event-related potentials (ERPs).MethodsERPs were recorded in 11 patients with DS, 23 patients with NDS and 23 healthy controls (HC), during anticipation of five different outcomes, small (SR) or large (LR) reward, small (SP) or large (LP) punishment or no-outcome (NO), and during feedback processing.ResultsPatients did not differ from HC on indices of anticipatory or consummatory anhedonia, but they showed reduced motivation. During reward anticipation, only patients with primary and persistent avolition showed ERPs abnormalities, with respect to HC, in the early processing stages and a reduced activity of cortical generators in the cingulate, in the temporal-occipital and fronto-parietal regions, that are involved in the attention modulation and visual perceptual processing.ConclusionsOur data suggest that anhedonia and avolition are partially independent constructs and that avolition is related to the inability to modulate attention and amplify visual perceptual processing of reward stimuli.
Introduction. P300 is an event-related potential (ERP) thought to reflect attention, working memory and context integration and has been shown to be consistently reduced in patients with Schizophrenia. Despite a possible relation between P300 components and cognitive deficits in Schizophrenia has been hypothesized, few studies addressed this hypothesis. Objectives. In the context of a multicenter study of the Italian Network for Research on Psychoses, our study focused on the investigation of auditory P300 component in relation to clinical and cognitive domains in patients with Schizophrenia. Methods. ERPs were recorded in 64 chronic, stabilized patients with Schizophrenia during a standard oddball task. N1 and P3b latency and amplitude were assessed at Fz and Pz, respectively. State of art instruments was used for clinical assessment. Cognitive indices (from the seven cognitive domains of the Measurement and Treatment of Cognition in Schizophrenia, MATRICS) were expressed as Z-scores from an Italian normative sample. Results. Correlation analysis revealed associations of P3b latency with age, education, PANSS-DIS, processing speed, working memory, St. Hans parkinsonism subscale. In a multiple linear regression model, processing speed was an independent significant predictor of P3b latency. Conclusion. For the first time, a strong relation between P3b latency and processing speed impairment was shown in Schizophrenia. Processing speed is considered a central factor in the relation between cognitive deficits and functional outcome in chronic schizophrenia. The association with P3b latency might shed lights in the neural basis of this complex construct.
IntroductionNegative symptoms are the psychopathological domain most associated to poor outcome in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ). Insight into their pathophysiology might contribute to develop innovative treatments for the syndrome. Recently, it has been hypothesized that avolition is related to a difficulty in anticipating reward or integrating value and action.ObjectivesOur study aimed to investigate abnormalities of reward anticipation in SCZ and evaluate associations of negative symptoms dimensions with the same abnormalities using electrophysiological indices.MethodsERPs were recorded during the execution of 'Monetary Incentive Delay' task in 30 SCZ patients stabilized on second generation antipsychotics and 23 and healthy controls (HC). Measures of anticipatory and consummatory pleasure, trait anhedonia and motivation were obtained in all subjects. A measure of avolition independent of anhedonia was obtained in patients.ResultsPatients did not differ from HC with respect to trait anhedonia and experience of pleasure but showed a deficit of motivation. Unlike HC, P3 amplitude in patients did not discriminate stimuli relevance in the early interval and was higher for the anticipation of loss in the late interval. In SCZ, early P3 amplitude for loss and reward anticipation was inversely related to social anhedonia but not to avolition.ConclusionPatients with preserved experience and anticipation of reward seem unable to integrate the relevance and rewarding value of future events in the context of their ongoing task. Our results indicate that anhedonia and avolition are partially independent constructs and that SCZ might integrate better loss than reward.
Introduction: Patients with schizophrenia often show a reduced ability to experience pleasure, but previous studies demonstrated that they are more characterized by "anticipatory anhedonia", rather than a deficit in experiencing pleasure itself ("consummatory anhedonia"). However, the brain circuits related to anticipation of pleasure and processing of reward signals in schizophrenia are yet unclear. Objectives/aims: We aimed to examine reward anticipation and feedback processing using event-related potentials (ERPs) in 24 stabilized patients with schizophrenia and 14 healthy controls. Methods: ERPs were recorded during a Monetary Incentive Delay task during anticipation of five different outcomes, small (SR) or large (LR) reward, small (SP) or large (LP) punishment or no-outcome (NO), and during feedback processing. Results: Patients had lower scores on TEPS anticipatory pleasure and BIS/BAS fun-seeking scales and higher scores for anhedonia and punishment sensitivity, than controls. The anticipation-related negativity was reduced in patients. Controls, but not patients, showed a larger amplitude for LP versus NO and LR. Fronto-central amplitude in patients was inversely correlated with TEPS anticipatory pleasure. The feedback-related negativity had a lower amplitude for LR than for all other conditions in controls, but not in patients. Only in controls, FRN was inversely correlated with TEPS consummatory pleasure. Conclusions: The frontal negativity during outcome anticipation discriminate punishment from other outcomes only in controls. The lower the amplitude of this component, the greater the deficit in anticipatory pleasure. As to FRN, only controls modulate the frontal negativity during processing of outcome and this modulation is associated with consummatory pleasure.
Structural and functional abnormalities of the left hemisphere, often involving the temporal lobe were frequently observed in schizophrenia. However, negative and discrepant findings were also reported. Our study aimed to investigate the presence of lateralized impairment of event-related potentials, recorded during a tonal dichotic listening task, in a group of clinically stabilized patients with schizophrenia. The ERP component N100, related to sensory processing of stimuli and generated in the temporal lobe cortex, was investigated. A passive dichotic listening task was used in order to exclude the effect of attention impairment on the observed ERP abnormalities. Patients with schizophrenia showed a pattern of hemispheric lateralization comparable with that observed in healthy controls. In both groups, dichotic listening inhibited the augmenting pattern of N100 amplitude with increasing tone intensity. However, patients failed to demonstrate the augmenting pattern of the N100 also with monaural tones, over the left temporal leads. This abnormality did not correlate with the severity of psychopathology. A role of antipsychotic treatment was excluded as the N100 showed a normal pattern of amplitude increase over right temporal leads. Our results suggest a state of functional inhibition of the left auditory cortex, akin to that induced by dichotic listening, in subjects with schizophrenia, indipendent of psychopathology or drug therapy.
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