Posts tagged social interaction

Humans are the only primates with large, highly visible sclera – the white part of the eye.

The eye plays a significant role in the expressiveness of a face, and how much sclera is shown can indicate the emotions or behavioral attitudes of a person. Wide-open eyes, exposing a lot of white, indicate fear or surprise. A thinner slit of exposed eye, such as when smiling, expresses happiness or joy. Averted eyes, as well as direct eye contact, can mean several things. So the eye white, or how much of it is shown and at what angle, plays a role in the social and cooperative interactions among humans.

Adult humans are well-attuned to social cues involving the eye and use them, along with a great range of other facial and body features, to respond appropriately during social interactions. This sensitivity to eye cues is hard-wired into the brain of adults as they respond to social eye cues even without consciously seeing them.

But it is unclear whether the ability to unconsciously distinguish between different social cues indicated by the eyes exists early in development and can therefore be considered a key feature of the human social makeup.

A new University of Virginia and Max Planck Institute study, published online this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that the ability to respond to eye cues apparently develops during infancy – at seven or so months.

“Our study provides developmental evidence for the notion that humans possess specific brain processes that allow them to automatically respond to eye cues,” said Tobias Grossmann, a University of Virginia developmental psychologist and one of the study’s authors.

Grossmann and his Max Planck Institute colleague Sarah Jessen used electroencephalography, or EEG, to measure the brain activity of 7-month-old infants while showing images of eyes wide open, narrowly opened, and with direct or averted gazes.

They found that the infants’ brains responded differently depending on the expression suggested by the eyes they viewed, which were shown absent of other facial features. They viewed the eye images for only 50 milliseconds – which is much less time than needed for an infant of this age to consciously perceive this kind of visual information.

“Their brains clearly responded to social cues conveyed through the eyes, indicating that even without conscious awareness, human infants are able to detect subtle social cues,” Grossmann said.

The infants’ brain responses displayed a different pattern to sclera depicting fearful expressions (wide-eyed) to non-fearful sclera. They also showed brain responses that differed when viewing direct gaze eyes compared to averted gaze.

“This demonstrates that, like adults, infants are sensitive to eye expressions of fear and direction of focus, and that these responses operate without conscious awareness,” Grossmann said. “The existence of such brain mechanisms in infants likely provides a vital foundation for the development of social interactive skills in humans.”

The infants in the study wore an EEG cap, like a small hat, which included sensors that could detect brain signals. Infants were sitting in the laps of their parents during the testing.

Filed under social perception social interaction brain activity infants EEG sclera neuroscience science

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October 16, 2014

Chemical Derived from Broccoli Sprouts Shows Promise in Treating Autism

Results of a small clinical trial suggest that a chemical derived from broccoli sprouts — and best known for claims that it can help prevent certain cancers — may ease classic behavioral symptoms in those with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

The study, a joint effort by scientists at MassGeneral Hospital for Children and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, involved 40 teenage boys and young men, ages 13 to 27, with moderate to severe autism.

In a report published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences during the week of Oct. 13, the researchers say that many of those who received a daily dose of the chemical sulforaphane experienced substantial improvements in their social interaction and verbal communication, along with decreases in repetitive, ritualistic behaviors, compared to those who received a placebo.

“We believe that this may be preliminary evidence for the first treatment for autism that improves symptoms by apparently correcting some of the underlying cellular problems,” says Paul Talalay, M.D., professor of pharmacology and molecular sciences, who has researched these vegetable compounds for the past 25 years.

“We are far from being able to declare a victory over autism, but this gives us important insights into what might help,” says co-investigator Andrew Zimmerman, M.D., now a professor of pediatric neurology at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

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September 12, 2014

Tipping the Balance of Behavior

Humans with autism often show a reduced frequency of social interactions and an increased tendency to engage in repetitive solitary behaviors. Autism has also been linked to dysfunction of the amygdala, a brain structure involved in processing emotions. Now Caltech researchers have discovered antagonistic neuron populations in the mouse amygdala that control whether the animal engages in social behaviors or asocial repetitive self-grooming. This discovery may have implications for understanding neural circuit dysfunctions that underlie autism in humans.

This discovery, which is like a “seesaw circuit,” was led by postdoctoral scholar Weizhe Hong in the laboratory of David J. Anderson, the Seymour Benzer Professor of Biology at Caltech and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The work was published online on September 11 in the journal Cell.

"We know that there is some hierarchy of behaviors, and they interact with each other because the animal can’t exhibit both social and asocial behaviors at the same time. In this study, we wanted to figure out how the brain does that," Anderson says.

Anderson and his colleagues discovered two intermingled but distinct populations of neurons in the amygdala, a part of the brain that is involved in innate social behaviors. One population promotes social behaviors, such as mating, fighting, or social grooming, while the other population controls repetitive self-grooming—an asocial behavior.

Interestingly, these two populations are distinguished according to the most fundamental subdivision of neuron subtypes in the brain: the “social neurons” are inhibitory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter GABA, or gamma-aminobutyric acid), while the “self-grooming neurons” are excitatory neurons (which release the neurotransmitter glutamate, an amino acid).

To study the relationship between these two cell types and their associated behaviors, the researchers used a technique called optogenetics. In optogenetics, neurons are genetically altered so that they express light-sensitive proteins from microbial organisms. Then, by shining a light on these modified neurons via a tiny fiber optic cable inserted into the brain, researchers can control the activity of the cells as well as their associated behaviors.

Using this optogenetic approach, Anderson’s team was able to selectively switch on the neurons associated with social behaviors and those linked with asocial behaviors.

With the social neurons, the behavior that was elicited depended upon the intensity of the light signal. That is, when high-intensity light was used, the mice became aggressive in the presence of an intruder mouse. When lower-intensity light was used, the mice no longer attacked, although they were still socially engaged with the intruder—either initiating mating behavior or attempting to engage in social grooming.

When the neurons associated with asocial behavior were turned on, the mouse began self-grooming behaviors such as paw licking and face grooming while completely ignoring all intruders. The self-grooming behavior was repetitive and lasted for minutes even after the light was turned off.

The researchers could also use the light-activated neurons to stop the mice from engaging in particular behaviors. For example, if a lone mouse began spontaneously self-grooming, the researchers could halt this behavior through the optogenetic activation of the social neurons. Once the light was turned off and the activation stopped, the mouse would return to its self-grooming behavior.

Surprisingly, these two groups of neurons appear to interfere with each other’s function: the activation of social neurons inhibits self-grooming behavior, while the activation of self-grooming neurons inhibits social behavior. Thus these two groups of neurons seem to function like a seesaw, one that controls whether mice interact with others or instead focus on themselves. It was completely unexpected that the two groups of neurons could be distinguished by whether they were excitatory or inhibitory. “If there was ever an experiment that ‘carves nature at its joints,’” says Anderson, “this is it.”

This seesaw circuit, Anderson and his colleagues say, may have some relevance to human behavioral disorders such as autism.

"In autism," Anderson says, "there is a decrease in social interactions, and there is often an increase in repetitive, sometimes asocial or self-oriented, behaviors"—a phenomenon known as perseveration. "Here, by stimulating a particular set of neurons, we are both inhibiting social interactions and promoting these perseverative, persistent behaviors."

Studies from other laboratories have shown that disruptions in genes implicated in autism show a similar decrease in social interaction and increase in repetitive self-grooming behavior in mice, Anderson says. However, the current study helps to provide a needed link between gene activity, brain activity, and social behaviors, “and if you don’t understand the circuitry, you are never going to understand how the gene mutation affects the behavior.” Going forward, he says, such a complete understanding will be necessary for the development of future therapies.

But could this concept ever actually be used to modify a human behavior?

"All of this is very far away, but if you found the right population of neurons, it might be possible to override the genetic component of a behavioral disorder like autism, by just changing the activity of the circuits—tipping the balance of the see-saw in the other direction," he says.

Filed under autism amygdala social interaction neurons social behavior neuroscience science

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September 9, 2014

Faces Are More Likely to Seem Alive When We Want to Feel Connected

Feeling socially disconnected may lead us to lower our threshold for determining that another being is animate or alive, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

“This increased sensitivity to animacy suggests that people are casting a wide net when looking for people they can possibly relate to — which may ultimately help them maximize opportunities to renew social connections,” explains psychological scientist and lead researcher Katherine Powers of Dartmouth College.

These findings enhance our understanding of the factors that contribute to face perception, mind perception, and social relationships, but they could also shed light on newer types of relationships that have emerged in the modern age, Powers argues, including our relationships with pets, online avatars, and even pieces of technology, such as computers, robots, and cell phones.

Feeling socially connected is a critical part of human life that impacts both mental and physical health; when we feel disconnected from others, we try to replenish our social connections.

“As social beings, we have an intrinsic motivation to pay attention to and connect with other people,” says Powers. “We wanted to examine the influence of this social motive on one of the most basic, low-level aspects of social perception: deciding whether or not a face is alive.”

Powers and colleagues had 30 college students view images of faces, which were actually morphs created by combining inanimate faces (such as a doll’s face) with human faces. The morphs ranged from 0% human to 100% human and showed both male and female faces.

The morphs were presented in random order and the students had to decide whether each face was animate or inanimate. Afterwards, they completed a survey that gauged their desire for social connections, in which they rated their agreement with statements such as “I want other people to accept me.”

The data revealed that desire for social connections was associated with a lower threshold for animacy. In other words, participants who had high scores on the social connections measure didn’t need to see as many human-like features in a face order to decide that it was alive.

To see if there might be a causal link, Powers and colleagues conducted another study in which they experimentally manipulated feelings of social connection.

A separate group of college students completed a personality questionnaire and were provided feedback ostensibly based on the questionnaire. In reality, the feedback was determined by random assignment. Some students were told that their future lives would be isolated and lonely, while others were told their lives would contain long-lasting, stable relationships. The feedback also included personality descriptions and statements tailored to each participant to ensure believability.

The students then viewed the face morphs.

As expected, students who had been told they would be isolated and lonely showed lower thresholds for animacy than those who were told they would have long-lasting relationships.

These findings are particularly interesting, the researchers argue, because previous research has shown that people are typically cautious in determining whether a face is alive:

“What’s really interesting here is the degree of variability in this perception,” says Powers. “Even though two people may be looking at the same face, the point at which they see life and decide that person is worthy of meaningful social interaction may not be the same — our findings show that it depends on an individual’s social relationship status and motivations for future social interactions.”

“I think the fact that we can observe such a bias in the perception of basic social cues really underscores the fundamental nature of the human need for social connection,” Powers adds.

Filed under face perception social perception social interaction psychology neuroscience science

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August 6, 2014

Blood-oxytocin levels in normal range in children with autism

Autism does not appear to be solely caused by a deficiency of oxytocin, but the hormone’s universal ability to boost social function may prove useful in treating a subset of children with the developmental disorder, according to new findings from the Stanford University School of Medicine and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

Low levels of oxytocin, a hormone involved in social functioning, have for years been suspected of causing autism. Prior research seeking a link has produced mixed results. Now, in the largest-ever study to test the purported connection, the range of blood oxytocin levels has been shown to be the same in children with autism as that observed in two comparison groups: children with autistic siblings and children without autistic siblings. In other words, similar numbers of children with low, medium and high oxytocin levels were found in all three groups.

A paper describing the new findings was published online Aug. 4 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Although autism was not directly linked to oxytocin deficiency, the Stanford team found that higher oxytocin levels were linked to better social functioning in all groups. All children with autism have social deficits, but in the study these deficits were worst in those with the lowest blood oxytocin and mildest in those with the highest oxytocin. In the comparison groups, children’s social skills also fell across a range that correlated to their oxytocin levels.

Regulator of social functioning

“Oxytocin appears to be a universal regulator of social functioning in humans,” said Karen Parker, PhD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the lead author of the study. “That encompasses both typically developing children as well as those with the severe social deficits we see in children with autism.”

Autism is a developmental disorder that affects 1 of every 68 children in the United States. It is characterized by social and communication deficits, repetitive behaviors and sensory problems. The new study included 79 children with autism, 52 of their unaffected siblings and 62 unrelated children without autism. All of the children were between the ages of 3 and 12.

“It didn’t matter if you were a typically developing child, a sibling or an individual with autism: Your social ability was related to a certain extent to your oxytocin levels, which is very different from what people have speculated,” said Antonio Hardan, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the study’s senior author. Hardan is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who treats children with autism at the hospital.

“The previous hypotheses saying that low oxytocin was linked to autism were maybe a little bit simplistic,” he said. “It’s much more complex: Oxytocin is a vulnerability factor that has to be accounted for, but it’s not the only thing leading to the development of autism.”

The researchers caution, however, that blood oxytocin measurements may be different than oxytocin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid bathing the brain, which they did not measure.

In addition to examining blood oxytocin levels, the researchers examined the importance of small variations in the gene coding for the oxytocin receptor. Certain receptor variants were correlated to higher scores on standard tests of social ability, the study found.

Inheriting social abilities

The team also discovered that blood levels of oxytocin are highly heritable: The levels are influenced by inheritance to about the same degree as adult height, which is often described as being strongly influenced by genetics.

"What our study hints at is that social function may be heritable in families," Parker said.

The study will help to guide future research to determine whether oxytocin is a useful autism treatment. The study’s findings suggest that some children with autism — such as the subset of kids with autism who have naturally low oxytocin levels, or those with oxytocin receptor gene variants associated with worse social functioning — might benefit most from oxytocin-like drugs.

“Autism is so heterogeneous,” Parker said. “If we can identify biomarkers that help us identify the patients most likely to benefit from a specific therapy, we expect that will be very useful.”

(Source: med.stanford.edu)

Filed under autism oxytocin social interaction social function genetics neuroscience science

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August 4, 2014

A little video gaming ‘produces well-adjusted children’

Playing video games for a short period each day could have a small but positive impact on child development, a study by Oxford University suggests.

Scientists found young people who spent less than an hour a day engaged in video games were better adjusted than those who did not play at all.

But children who used consoles for more than three hours reported lower satisfaction with their lives overall.

The research is published in the journal Pediatrics.

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July 30, 2014

Social origins of intelligence in the brain

By studying the injuries and aptitudes of Vietnam War veterans who suffered penetrating head wounds during the war, scientists are tackling — and beginning to answer — longstanding questions about how the brain works.

The researchers found that brain regions that contribute to optimal social functioning also are vital to general intelligence and to emotional intelligence. This finding bolsters the view that general intelligence emerges from the emotional and social context of one’s life.

The findings are reported in the journal Brain.

“We are trying to understand the nature of general intelligence and to what extent our intellectual abilities are grounded in social cognitive abilities,” said Aron Barbey, a University of Illinois professor of neuroscience, of psychology, and of speech and hearing science. Barbey (bar-BAY), an affiliate of the Beckman Institute and of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I., led the new study with an international team of collaborators.

Studies in social psychology indicate that human intellectual functions originate from the social context of everyday life, Barbey said.

“We depend at an early stage of our development on social relationships — those who love us care for us when we would otherwise be helpless,” he said.

Social interdependence continues into adulthood and remains important throughout the lifespan, Barbey said.

“Our friends and family tell us when we could make bad mistakes and sometimes rescue us when we do,” he said. “And so the idea is that the ability to establish social relationships and to navigate the social world is not secondary to a more general cognitive capacity for intellectual function, but that it may be the other way around. Intelligence may originate from the central role of relationships in human life and therefore may be tied to social and emotional capacities.”

The study involved 144 Vietnam veterans injured by shrapnel or bullets that penetrated the skull, damaging distinct brain tissues while leaving neighboring tissues intact. Using CT scans, the scientists painstakingly mapped the affected brain regions of each participant, then pooled the data to build a collective map of the brain.

The researchers used a battery of carefully designed tests to assess participants’ intellectual, emotional and social capabilities. They then looked for patterns that tied damage to specific brain regions to deficits in the participants’ ability to navigate the intellectual, emotional or social realms. Social problem solving in this analysis primarily involved conflict resolution with friends, family and peers at work.

As in their earlier studies of general intelligence and emotional intelligence, the researchers found that regions of the frontal cortex (at the front of the brain), the parietal cortex (further back near the top of the head) and the temporal lobes (on the sides of the head behind the ears) are all implicated in social problem solving. The regions that contributed to social functioning in the parietal and temporal lobes were located only in the brain’s left hemisphere, while both left and right frontal lobes were involved.

The brain networks found to be important to social adeptness were not identical to those that contribute to general intelligence or emotional intelligence, but there was significant overlap, Barbey said.

“The evidence suggests that there’s an integrated information-processing architecture in the brain, that social problem solving depends upon mechanisms that are engaged for general intelligence and emotional intelligence,” he said. “This is consistent with the idea that intelligence depends to a large extent on social and emotional abilities, and we should think about intelligence in an integrated fashion rather than making a clear distinction between cognition and emotion and social processing. This makes sense because our lives are fundamentally social — we direct most of our efforts to understanding others and resolving social conflict. And our study suggests that the architecture of intelligence in the brain may be fundamentally social, too.”

(Source: news.illinois.edu)

Filed under intelligence social intelligence social interaction frontal lobe neuroscience science

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June 20, 2014

Scientists tie social behavior to activity in specific brain circuit

A team of Stanford University investigators has linked a particular brain circuit to mammals’ tendency to interact socially. Stimulating this circuit — one among millions in the brain — instantly increases a mouse’s appetite for getting to know a strange mouse, while inhibiting it shuts down its drive to socialize with the stranger.

The new findings, published June 19 in Cell, may throw light on psychiatric disorders marked by impaired social interaction such as autism, social anxiety, schizophrenia and depression, said the study’s senior author, Karl Deisseroth, MD, PhD, a professor of bioengineering and of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The findings are also significant in that they highlight not merely the role of one or another brain chemical, as pharmacological studies tend to do, but rather the specific components of brain circuits involved in a complex behavior. A combination of cutting-edge techniques developed in Deisseroth’s laboratory permitted unprecedented analysis of how brain activity controls behavior.

Deisseroth, the D.H. Chen Professor and a member of the interdisciplinary Stanford Bio-X institute, is a practicing psychiatrist who sees patients with severe social deficits. “People with autism, for example, often have an outright aversion to social interaction,” he said. They can find socializing — even mere eye contact — painful.

Deisseroth pioneered a brain-exploration technique, optogenetics, that involves selectively introducing light-receptor molecules to the surfaces of particular nerve cells in a living animal’s brain and then carefully positioning, near the circuit in question, the tip of a lengthy, ultra-thin optical fiber (connected to a laser diode at the other end) so that the photosensitive cells and the circuits they compose can be remotely stimulated or inhibited at the turn of a light switch while the animal remains free to move around in its cage.

Monitoring activity in real time

Using optogenetics and other methods he and his associates have invented, Deisseroth and his associates were able to both manipulate and monitor activity in specific nerve-cell clusters, and the fiber tracts connecting them, in mice’s brains in real time while the animals were exposed to either murine newcomers or inanimate objects in various laboratory environments. The mice’s behavioral responses were captured by video and compared with simultaneously recorded brain-circuit activity.

In some cases, the researchers observed activity in various brain centers and nerve-fiber tracts connecting them as the mice variously examined or ignored one another. Other experiments involved stimulating or inhibiting impulses within those circuits to see how these manipulations affected the mice’s social behavior.

To avoid confusing simple social interactions with mating- and aggression-related behaviors, the researchers restricted their experiments to female mouse pairs.

The scientists first examined the relationship between the mice’s social interactions and a region in the brain stem called the ventral tegmental area. The VTA is a key node in the brain’s reward circuitry, which produces sensations of pleasure in response to success in such survival-improving activities as eating, mating or finding a warm shelter in a cold environment.

The VTA transmits signals to other centers throughout the brain via tracts of fibers that secrete chemicals, including one called dopamine, at contact points abutting nerve cells within these faraway centers. When dopamine lands on receptors on those nerve cells, it can set off signaling activity within them.

Abnormal activity in the VTA has been linked to drug abuse and depression, for example. But much less is known about this brain center’s role in social behavior, and it had not previously been possible to observe or control activity along its connections during social behavior.

Deisseroth and his colleagues used mice whose dopamine-secreting, or dopaminergic, VTA nerve cells had been bioengineered to express optogenetic control proteins that could set off or inhibit signaling in the cells in response to light. They observed that enhancing activity in these cells increased a mouse’s penchant for social interaction. When a newcomer was introduced into its cage, it came, it saw, it sniffed. Inhibiting the dopaminergic VTA cells had the opposite effect: The host lost much of its interest in the guest.

Only social interaction affected

On the other hand, such manipulations of the VTA’s dopaminergic cells had no effect on the mice’s penchant for exploring novel objects (a golf ball, for example) placed in their cages. Nor did it change their overall propensity to move around. The effect appeared to be specific for social interaction.

Finding out exactly which dopaminergic projections from the VTA, traveling to which remote brain structures, were carrying the signals that generate exploratory social behavior required designing a new monitoring methodology. The signals traveling along such projections are extremely weak and confounded by background noise, especially when located deep within the brains of ambulatory animals. Deisseroth’s group overcame this by developing a highly sensitive technology capable of plucking these tiny signals out of the surrounding noise. The new technique, called fiber photometry, is a sophisticated way of measuring calcium flux, which invariably accompanies signaling activity along the fibers projecting from nerve cells.

Using a combination of optogenetics and fiber photometry, the investigators were able to demonstrate that a particular tract projecting from the VTA to a mid-brain structure called the nucleus accumbens (also strongly implicated in the reward system) was the relevant conduit carrying the impetus to social interaction in the mice.

A third technological trick helped determine which recipient nerve cells within the nucleus accumbens were involved in the social-behavior circuitry. That structure’s two types of dopamine-responsive cells are differentiated by the types of dopamine receptors, referred to as D1 and D2, on their surfaces. The team performed experiments in animals bioengineered so that the normally D1-containing cells instead expressed a modified, light-inducible version of that receptor. These experiments, along with complementary experiments blocking the D1 receptors with specific drug antagonists, showed that the D1 nucleus-accumbens nerve cells were mediating the changes in social behavior. Tripping off those receptors, either by optogenetically inducing incoming tracts to deliver dopamine to these receptors, or by directly stimulating light-activated forms of these receptors on the target cells, enhanced mice’s social exploration.

Helping to see how social behavior can go wrong

“Every behavior presumably arises from a pattern of activity in the brain, and every behavioral malfunction arises from malfunctioning circuitry,” said Deisseroth, who is also co-director of Stanford’s Cracking the Neural Code Program. “The ability, for the first time, to pinpoint a particular nerve-cell projection involved in the social behavior of a living, moving animal will greatly enhance our ability to understand how social behavior operates, and how it can go wrong.”

(Source: med.stanford.edu)

Filed under social interaction brain activity autism schizophrenia optogenetics fiber photometry neuroscience science

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May 23, 2014

Screening for Autism: There’s an App for That

Most schools across the United States provide simple vision tests to their students—not to prescribe glasses, but to identify potential problems and recommend a trip to the optometrist. Researchers are now on the cusp of providing the same kind of service for autism.

Researchers at Duke University have developed software that tracks and records infants’ activity during videotaped autism screening tests. Their results show that the program is as good at spotting behavioral markers of autism as experts giving the test themselves, and better than non-expert medical clinicians and students in training.

The results appear online in the journal Autism Research and Treatment.

“We’re not trying to replace the experts,” said Jordan Hashemi, a graduate student in computer and electrical engineering at Duke. “We’re trying to transfer the knowledge of the relatively few autism experts available into classrooms and homes across the country. We want to give people tools they don’t currently have, because research has shown that early intervention can greatly impact the severity of the symptoms common in autism spectrum disorders.”

The study focused on three behavioral tests that can help identify autism in very young children.

In one test, an infant’s attention is drawn to a toy being shaken on the left side and then redirected to a toy being shaken on the right side. Clinicians count how long it takes for the child’s attention to shift in response to the changing stimulus. The second test passes a toy across the infant’s field of view and looks for any delay in the child tracking its motion. In the last test, a clinician rolls a ball to a child and looks for eye contact afterward—a sign of the child’s engagement with their play partner.

In all of the tests, the person administering them isn’t just controlling the stimulus, he or she is also counting how long it takes for the child to react—an imprecise science at best. The new program allows testers to forget about taking measurements while also providing more accuracy, recording reaction times down to tenths of a second.

“The great benefit of the video and software is for general practitioners who do not have the trained eye to look for subtle early warning signs of autism,” said Amy Esler, an assistant professor of pediatrics and autism researcher at the University of Minnesota, who participated in some of the trials highlighted in the paper.

“The software has the potential to automatically analyze a child’s eye gaze, walking patterns or motor behaviors for signs that are distinct from typical development,” Esler said. “These signs would signal to doctors that they need to refer a family to a specialist for a more detailed evaluation.”

According to Hashemi and his adviser, Guillermo Sapiro, professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Duke, because the program is non-invasive, it could be useful immediately in homes and clinics. Neither, however, expects it to become widely used—not because clinicians, teachers and parents aren’t willing, but because the researchers are working on an even more practical solution.

Later this year, the Duke team (which includes students and faculty from engineering and psychiatry) plans to test a new tablet application that could do away with the need for a person to administer any tests at all. The program would watch for physical and facial responses to visual cues played on the screen, analyze the data and automatically report any potential red flags. Any parent, teacher or clinician would simply need to download the app and sit their child down in front of it for a few minutes.

The efforts are part of the Information Initiative at Duke, which connects researchers from disparate fields to experts in computer programming to help analyze large data sets.

“We’re currently working with autism experts at Duke Medicine to determine what sorts of easy tests could be used on just a computer or tablet screen to spot any potential concerns,” said Sapiro. “The goal is to mimic the same sorts of social interactions that the tests with the toys and balls measure, but without the toys and balls. The research has shown that the earlier autism can be spotted, the more beneficial intervention can be. And we want to provide everyone in the world with the ability to spot those signs as early as possible.”

(Source: pratt.duke.edu)

Filed under autism infants social interaction eye movements attention ASD neuroscience science

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April 29, 2014

Oxytocin promotes social behavior in infant rhesus monkeys

The hormone oxytocin appears to increase social behaviors in newborn rhesus monkeys, according to a study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health, the University of Parma in Italy, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The findings indicate that oxytocin is a promising candidate for new treatments for developmental disorders affecting social skills and bonding.

Oxytocin, a hormone produced by the pituitary gland, is involved in labor and birth and in the production of breast milk. Studies have shown that oxytocin also plays a role in parental bonding, mating, and in social dynamics. Because of its possible involvement in social encounters, many researchers have suggested that oxytocin might be useful as a treatment for conditions affecting social behaviors, such as autism spectrum disorders. Although oxytocin has been shown to increase certain social behaviors in adults, before the current study it had not been shown to do so in primate infants of any species.

Working with infant rhesus monkeys, the NIH researchers found that oxytocin increased two facial gestures associated with social interactions— one used by the monkeys themselves in certain social situations, the other in imitation of their human caregivers.

“It was important to test whether oxytocin would promote social behaviors in infants in the same respects as it appears to promote social interaction among adults,” said the study’s first author, Elizabeth A. Simpson, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow of the University of Parma, conducting research in the Comparative Behavioral Genetics Section of the NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “Our results indicate that oxytocin is a candidate for further studies on treating developmental disorders of social functioning.”

The study was published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers began by gauging the ability of rhesus macaques to imitate two facial gestures: lip smacking and tongue protrusion. In lip smacking, the lips are protruded and open, then smacked together repeatedly. The study authors wrote that rhesus mothers will engage in this facial gesture with their infants in the first month after giving birth. Tongue protrusion involves a brief protrusion and retraction of the tongue. Although this gesture is seen in other primates and typically not seen in macaques, macaques will imitate it when their human caregivers display it, the study authors added.

By observing the monkeys’ ability to imitate the two gestures, the researchers sought to determine if oxytocin could promote social interaction through a gesture that was natural to them as well as through a gesture not part of their normal communication sequence.

The researchers tested the infants in the first week after birth. Three times a day, every other day, the caregivers would demonstrate the facial gestures in sequence to the infant monkeys, while the animals’ responses were recorded on video. At this phase of the study, the researchers found that some of the monkeys mimicked their caregivers’ gestures more frequently than did other monkeys. The researchers referred to the monkeys who gestured more frequently as strong imitators.

Beginning in the second week of life, the researchers tested the monkeys on two separate days. The infant monkeys inhaled an aerosolized dose of oxytocin in one session, and a dose of saline in the other. In each session, the dose was delivered through an inhalation mask held gently over the animal’s face.

Overall, the monkeys were more communicative after receiving oxytocin, more frequently making facial gestures, than they were after receiving the saline. The monkeys were more likely to engage in lip smacking than tongue protrusion, but were more likely still to engage in either of these gestures after oxytocin than after the saline. There also were differences in the frequency of gesturing among the individual monkeys, with the strong imitators becoming even stronger imitators after receiving oxytocin.

After oxytocin exposure, the strong imitators were more likely to look at caregivers and stand close to them than they were after the saline. Looking into a caregiver’s face and remaining in close proximity to a caregiver are indicators of social interaction and social interest, Dr. Simpson said.

In another test, the researchers found that after exposure to oxytocin, monkeys had lower levels of cortisol in their saliva. Cortisol is produced by the adrenal glands in response to stress. Lower cortisol levels after oxytocin exposure indicate that oxytocin may also function to diminish anxiety, the researchers wrote.

Filed under oxytocin neurodevelopmental disorders social behavior social interaction primates neuroscience science