Olfactory Processing and Brain Maturation

Differential Olfactory Identification in Children with Autism and Asperger’s Disorder: A Comparative and Longitudinal Study

“…Brewer et al (2008) examined children with HFA aged 5-9 years and found no difference in OI compared with controls. The HFA group, however, showed a negative age-OI correlation that was not present in controls, and is atypical of well-established norms in which OI improves with age from childhood into middle adulthood reflecting maturation of the orbitofrontal regions (Brewer et al 2006;Doty 1995;Doty et al 1984b;Gogtay et al 2004). Based on this atypical age-OI pattern, Brewer et al hypothesized that the HFA group may grow into deficit as they reached the neural growth spurt of puberty.…”

Generalized and Specific Cognitive Performance in Clinical High-Risk Cohorts: A Review Highlighting Potential Vulnerability Markers for Psychosis

“…This has implications for interpretation, where a confounding factor that has not been adequately addressed to date concerns the likely incomplete maturation of executive function that parallels prefrontal development. 76 Further, both the UHR and basic symptoms approaches rely on help-seeking people rather than a whole population, epidemiological approach. This limits the generalizability of the findings and makes comparison with genetic-and population-risk approaches difficult.…”

“…Current work is underway to confirm the hypotheses that OID in this cohort reflects a neurodevelopmental lag of prefrontal aspects of limbic-prefrontal pathways, that OID is likely to be more associated with emerging negative symptoms and treatment resistance and, further, that OID is likely to reflect stable trait markers. 75,76 Finally, we are working on parsing olfactory identification ability further into sensation, detection, and identification, for example, to examine even more discrete neuropsychological subprocesses that are involved in successful performance on this task. 76 Utilization of more experimental challenges of relatively specific components of cognition, as measured by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB 77 ) was reflected in the paradigm reported by Wood and colleagues.…”

“…75,76 Finally, we are working on parsing olfactory identification ability further into sensation, detection, and identification, for example, to examine even more discrete neuropsychological subprocesses that are involved in successful performance on this task. 76 Utilization of more experimental challenges of relatively specific components of cognition, as measured by the Cambridge Neuropsychological Testing Automated Battery (CANTAB 77 ) was reflected in the paradigm reported by Wood and colleagues. 78 Here, working memory (WM) was examined in 38 UHR PACE patients, of whom 9 later developed psychosis.…”

Early intervention in psychosis: clinical aspects of treatment

“…harnessed into sensible decision-making (Brewer 2006a). This can be achieved by a number of techniques (Box 1), which should be maintained through out treatment.…”