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Magnetic resonance imaging of hippocampal internal architecture (HIA) at 3T is challenging. HIA is defined by layers of gray and white matter that are less than 1 mm thick in the coronal plane. To visualize HIA, conventional MRI approaches have relied on sequences with high in-plane resolution (≤0.5 mm) but comparatively thick slices (2-5 mm). However, thicker slices are prone to volume averaging effects that result in loss of HIA clarity and blurring of the borders of the hippocampal subfields in up to 61% of slices as has been reported. In this work we describe an approach to hippocampal imaging that provides consistently high HIA clarity using a commonly available sequence and post-processing techniques that is flexible and may be applicable to any MRI platform. We refer to this approach as High Resolution Multiple Image Co-registration and Averaging (HR-MICRA). This approach uses a variable flip angle turbo spin echo sequence to repeatedly acquire a whole brain T2w image volume with high resolution in three dimensions in a relatively short amount of time, and then co-register the volumes to correct for movement and average the repeated scans to improve SNR. We compared the averages of 4, 9, and 16 individual scans in 20 healthy controls using a published HIA clarity rating scale. In the body of the hippocampus, the proportion of slices with good or excellent HIA clarity was 90%, 83%, and 67% for the 16x, 9x, and 4x HR-MICRA images, respectively. Using the 4x HR-MICRA images as a baseline, the 9x HR-MICRA images were 2.6 times and 16x HR-MICRA images were 3.2 times more likely to have high HIA ratings (p < 0.001) across all hippocampal segments (head, body, and tail). The thin slices of the HR-MICRA images allow reformatting in any plane with clear visualization of hippocampal dentation in the sagittal plane. Clear and consistent visualization of HIA will allow application of this technique to future hippocampal structure research, as well as more precise manual or automated segmentation.

Magnetic resonance imaging of hippocampal internal architecture (HIA) at 3T is challenging. HIA is defined by layers of gray and white matter that are less than 1 mm thick in the coronal plane. To visualize HIA, conventional MRI approaches have relied on sequences with high in-plane resolution (≤0.5 mm) but comparatively thick slices (2-5 mm). However, thicker slices are prone to volume averaging effects that result in loss of HIA clarity and blurring of the borders of the hippocampal subfields in up to 61% of slices as has been reported. In this work we describe an approach to hippocampal imaging that provides consistently high HIA clarity using a commonly available sequence and post-processing techniques that is flexible and may be applicable to any MRI platform. We refer to this approach as High Resolution Multiple Image Co-registration and Averaging (HR-MICRA). This approach uses a variable flip angle turbo spin echo sequence to repeatedly acquire a whole brain T2w image volume with high resolution in three dimensions in a relatively short amount of time, and then co-register the volumes to correct for movement and average the repeated scans to improve SNR. We compared the averages of 4, 9, and 16 individual scans in 20 healthy controls using a published HIA clarity rating scale. In the body of the hippocampus, the proportion of slices with good or excellent HIA clarity was 90%, 83%, and 67% for the 16x, 9x, and 4x HR-MICRA images, respectively. Using the 4x HR-MICRA images as a baseline, the 9x HR-MICRA images were 2.6 times and 16x HR-MICRA images were 3.2 times more likely to have high HIA ratings (p < 0.001) across all hippocampal segments (head, body, and tail). The thin slices of the HR-MICRA images allow reformatting in any plane with clear visualization of hippocampal dentation in the sagittal plane. Clear and consistent visualization of HIA will allow application of this technique to future hippocampal structure research, as well as more precise manual or automated segmentation.

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a leading cause of late life pain and disability, and non-Hispanic black (NHB) adults experience greater OA-related pain and disability than non-Hispanic whites (NHWs). Recent evidence implicates psychosocial stress, cognitive-attentional processes, and altered central pain processing as contributors to greater OA-related pain and disability among NHBs. To address these ethnic/race disparities, this clinical trial will test whether a mindfulness intervention (Breathing and Attention Training, BAT) combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) will enhance pain modulatory balance and pain-related brain function, reduce clinical pain, and attenuate ethnic differences therein, among NHBs and NHWs with knee OA. Participants will complete assessments of clinical pain, function, psychosocial measures, and quantitative sensory testing (QST), including mechanical temporal summation and conditioned pain modulation. Neuroimaging will be performed to examine pain-related brain structure and function. Then, participants will be randomized to one of four groups created by crossing two BAT conditions (Real vs. Sham) with two tDCS conditions (Real vs. Sham). Participants will then undergo five treatment sessions during which the assigned BAT and tDCS interventions will be delivered concurrently for 20 min over one week. After the fifth intervention session, participants will undergo assessments of clinical pain and function, QST and neuroimaging identical to the pretreatment measures, and monthly follow-up assessments of pain will be conducted for three months. This will be the first study to determine whether mindfulness and tDCS treatments will show additive or synergistic effects when combined, and whether treatment effects differ across ethnic/race groups.

The healthcare industry is transforming, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerging as a powerful tool for revolutionizing patient care, medical research, and administrative efficiency. However, successfully implementing AI projects in this highly regulated and complex environment requires a unique blend of expertise. Enter the project manager (PM) and the Project Management Office (PMO) -- two crucial roles that are the backbone for ensuring the successful integration of AI in healthcare. This article, the first of two parts, delves into the critical roles PMs and PMOs play in navigating the complexities of AI-enabled healthcare projects. With input from 22 experts, we have investigated specific challenges PMs and PMOs face, the skillsets they need, and the strategies they could employ to ensure the successful development, deployment, and continuous improvement of AI solutions within the healthcare landscape. While part 1 of this series focused on crucial project manager concepts, this concluding article focuses on the role of PMOs in AI-driven healthcare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The healthcare industry is transforming, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerging as a powerful tool for revolutionizing patient care, medical research, and administrative efficiency. However, successfully implementing AI projects in this highly regulated and complex environment requires a unique blend of expertise. Enter the project manager (PM) and the Project Management Office (PMO) - two crucial roles that are the backbone for ensuring the successful integration of AI in healthcare. This article, the first of two parts, delves into the critical roles PMs and PMOs play in navigating the complexities of AI-enabled healthcare projects. With input from 22 experts, we have investigated specific challenges PMs and PMOs face, the skillsets they need, and the strategies they could employ to ensure the successful development, deployment, and continuous improvement of AI solutions within the healthcare landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current research on sleep using experimental animals is limited by the expense and time-consuming nature of traditional EEG/EMG recordings. We present here an alternative, noninvasive approach utilizing piezoelectric films configured as highly sensitive motion detectors. These film strips attached to the floor of the rodent cage produce an electrical output in direct proportion to the distortion of the material. During sleep, movement associated with breathing is the predominant gross body movement and, thus, output from the piezoelectric transducer provided an accurate respiratory trace during sleep. During wake, respiratory movements are masked by other motor activities. An automatic pattern recognition system was developed to identify periods of sleep and wake using the piezoelectric generated signal. Due to the complex and highly variable waveforms that result from subtle postural adjustments in the animals, traditional signal analysis techniques were not sufficient for accurate classification of sleep versus wake. Therefore, a novel pattern recognition algorithm was developed that successfully distinguished sleep from wake in approximately 95% of all epochs. This algorithm may have general utility for a variety of signals in biomedical and engineering applications. This automated system for monitoring sleep is noninvasive, inexpensive, and may be useful for large-scale sleep studies including genetic approaches towards understanding sleep and sleep disorders, and the rapid screening of the efficacy of sleep or wake promoting drugs. Index Terms--Activity, automated, behavior, classification, instrumentation, mice, noninvasive, respiration, wake.

Purpose: Fibromyalgia is a common co-morbidity in patients with interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome. Quantitative sensory testing measures and regional cerebral blood flow measures have been noted to differ from healthy controls in both subjects with fibromyalgia and those with interstitial cystitis when studied independently. The present study examined such measures in subjects with the diagnosis of interstitial cystitis both with and without the co-diagnosis of fibromyalgia to determine whether differences in these measures may be associated with co-morbidity. Patients and Methods: Female subjects with the diagnosis of interstitial cystitis with (n = 15) and without (n = 19) the co-diagnosis of fibromyalgia as well as healthy control subjects (n = 41) underwent quantitative sensory testing. A subset of these patients (9 with and 9 without fibromyalgia) underwent brain perfusion studies using arterial spin labeled functional magnetic resonance imaging. An analysis was performed of absolute regional cerebral blood flow of regions-of-interest when experiencing a full bladder compared with an empty bladder. Results: Subjects with both interstitial cystitis and fibromyalgia were more hypersensitive than those without fibromyalgia as well as healthy controls in most sensory measures except heat. Subjects with interstitial cystitis, but no fibromyalgia, differed from healthy controls only in toleration of the ischemic forearm task. Other co-morbidities were more common in those subjects with both interstitial cystitis and fibromyalgia. Bladder fullness was associated with significantly greater whole brain gray matter blood flow in subjects with interstitial cystitis and fibromyalgia when compared with that of subjects with interstitial cystitis without fibromyalgia. Examination of regional cerebral blood flow in individual regions-of-interest demonstrated statistically significant differences between the subjects with interstitial cystitis with and those without fibromyalgia bilaterally in the thalamus, amygdala and hippocampus, as well as the right prefrontal cortex and greater responsiveness to changes in bladder fullness in the insula. Conclusion: Quantitative sensory testing and brain perfusion data support that there are two phenotypes of interstitial cystitis patients, which can be differentiated by a co-diagnosis of fibromyalgia. This may affect responsiveness to treatment and suggest the utility of stratifying interstitial cystitis patients according to their co-morbidities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compelling evidence exists that non-Hispanic blacks (NHB) engage in pain catastrophizing (negatively evaluate one's ability to cope with pain) more often than non-Hispanic whites (NHW). Functional neuroimaging studies revealed that individuals with high levels of trait pain catastrophizing show increased cerebral responses to pain in several pain-related brain regions (e.g., insula, primary somatosensory cortex [S1]), but associations between brain structure and catastrophizing remain largely unexplored. The current investigation was conducted at the University of Florida and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Participants were 129 community-dwelling adults with or at risk of knee osteoarthritis (OA). Participants completed the pain catastrophizing subscale of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire-Revised and the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain intensity subscale. Magnetic Resonance Imaging data were obtained. MANOVA and Chi-Square analyses assessed sociodemographic/clinical differences stratified by ethnicity/race. Multivariate regression analyses with insula and somatosensory cortical thickness entered as dependent variables with catastrophizing and the interaction between catastrophizing and ethnicity/race as the independent variables. Covariates include education, body mass index, study site, and WOMAC pain (ethnicity/race was an additional covariate in non-stratified analyses). There were significant interactions between ethnicity/race, pain catastrophizing, and brain structure. Higher pain catastrophizing was associated with thinner S1 bilaterally (ps <.05) in NHW, but not NHB participants with or at risk for knee OA. These results suggest that pain catastrophizing might have differing effects on pain-related central pathways and may contribute to ethnic/race group differences in individuals with or at risk for knee OA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Non-Hispanic black (NHB) individuals have increased risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) relative to non-Hispanic whites (NHW). Ethnicity/race can serve as a proxy sociodemographic variable for a complex representation of sociocultural and environmental factors. Chronic pain is a form of stress with high prevalence and sociodemographic disparities. Chronic pain is linked to lower cognition and accelerated biological aging.Objective: The purpose of this study is to seek understanding of potential cognitive and temporal lobe structural brain AD vulnerabilities based on chronic pain stage and ethnicity/race.Methods: Participants included 147 community dwelling NHB and NHW adults without dementia between 45-85 years old who had or were at risk of knee osteoarthritis. All participants received an MRI (3T Philips), the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), and assessment of clinical knee pain stage.Results: There were ethnic/race group differences in MoCA scores but no relationships with chronic knee pain stage. Ethnicity/race moderated the relationship between AD-related temporal lobe thickness and chronic pain stage with quadratic patterns suggesting thinner cortex in high chronic pain stage NHB adults.Conclusion: There appear to be complex relationships between chronic knee pain stage, temporal lobe cortex, and sociodemographic variables. Specifically, NHB participants without dementia but with high chronic knee pain stage appeared to have thinner temporal cortex in areas associated with AD. Understanding the effects of sociocultural and socioeconomic factors on health outcomes is the first step to challenging the disparities in healthcare that now appear to link disease conditions to neurodegenerative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Networks-on-chips (NoCs) are gaining in popularity as replacement for shared medium interconnects in chip-multiprocessors (CMPs) and multiprocessor systems-on-chips, and their performance becoming essential to system performance. There have been emerging studies to achieve better power/energy efficiency without performance degradation on NoCs. However, there are still non-negligible latency issues caused by the mechanism of power efficient approaches. To alleviate the latency problem and to transfer data efficiently with the high utilization of interconnect resources, we propose an on-chip network architecture that improves latency and bandwidth. Increasing the data/link widths across the network may considerably resolve this problem but is a costly proposition both in terms of device area and of power. Alternatively, we propose a dual-path router architecture that efficiently exploits path diversity to attain low latency without significant hardware overhead. By: 1) doubling the number of injection and ejection ports; 2) splitting packets into two halves; 3) recomposing routing policy to support path diversity; and 4) provisioning the network hardware design, we can considerably enhance network resource utilization to achieve much higher performance in latency. The proposed simultaneous dual-path routing (SDPR) scheme outperformed the conventional dimension order routing (DOR) technique across synthetic workloads by 31%–40% in average latency and up to a 100% improvement in throughput performance running on a 49-core CMP. Our synthesizable model for the SDPR router and network provides accurate power and area reports. According to the synthesis reports, SDPR incurs insignificant overhead compared to the baseline XY DOR router. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose In healthy control subjects certain brain regions of interest demonstrate increased regional cerebral blood flow in response to painful stimuli. We examined the effect of bladder distension on arterial spin label functional magnetic resonance imaging measures of regional cerebral blood flow in regions of interest in subjects with interstitial cystitis. Materials and Methods A total of 11 female subjects with interstitial cystitis and 11 healthy controls underwent 3 brain perfusion scan studies using arterial spin label functional magnetic resonance imaging, including 1) with a full bladder, 2) with an empty bladder and 3) while experiencing heat pain. Regional cerebral blood flow was calculated using custom software and individual scans were spatially normalized to the MNI (Montreal Neurological Institute) template. Region of interest based, absolute regional cerebral blood flow was determined for each condition and for the within group/within subject regional cerebral blood flow distribution changes induced by each condition. Results Bladder distension was associated with robust increases in regional cerebral blood flow in subjects with interstitial cystitis. The increases were greater than those in healthy controls in multiple regions of interest, including the supplemental motor area (mainly Brodmann area 6), the motor and sensory cortex, the insula bilaterally, the hippocampal structures bilaterally, and the middle and posterior cingulate areas bilaterally. During heat pain healthy controls had more robust regional cerebral blood flow increases in the amygdala bilaterally. At baseline with an empty bladder there was lower regional cerebral blood flow in the insula, and the mid and posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally in subjects with interstitial cystitis. Conclusions Compared to healthy controls, subjects with interstitial cystitis have limited differences in regional cerebral blood flow in baseline (empty bladder) conditions as well as during heat pain. However, they had robust regional cerebral blood flow increases in the full bladder state in regions of interest typically associated with pain, emotion and/or motor control, indicating altered processing of bladder related sensations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deficits in language comprehension have been widely reported in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), with behavioral and neuroimaging studies finding increased reliance on visuospatial processing to aid in language comprehension. However, no study to date, has taken advantage of this strength in visuospatial processing to improve language comprehension difficulties in ASD. This study used a translational neuroimaging approach to test the role of a visual imagery-based reading intervention in improving the brain circuitry underlying language processing in children with ASD. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in a longitudinal study design, was used to investigate intervention-related change in sentence comprehension, brain activation, and functional connectivity in three groups of participants (age 8-13 years): an experimental group of ASD children (ASD-EXP), a wait-list control group of ASD children (ASD-WLC), and a group of typically developing control children. After intervention, the ASD-EXP group showed significant increase in activity in visual and language areas and right-hemisphere language area homologues, putamen, and thalamus, suggestive of compensatory routes to increase proficiency in reading comprehension. Additionally, ASD children who had the most improvement in reading comprehension after intervention showed greater functional connectivity between left-hemisphere language areas, the middle temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus while reading high imagery sentences. Thus, the findings of this study, which support the principles of dual coding theory [Paivio 2007], suggest the potential of a strength-based reading intervention in changing brain responses and facilitating better reading comprehension in ASD children. Autism Res 2015. © 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alterations in interregional neural connectivity have been suggested as a signature of the pathobiology of autism. There have been many reports of functional and anatomical connectivity being altered while individuals with autism are engaged in complex cognitive and social tasks. Although disrupted instantaneous correlation between cortical regions observed from functional MRI is considered to be an explanatory model for autism, the causal influence of a brain area on another (effective connectivity) is a vital link missing in these studies. The current study focuses on addressing this in an fMRI study of Theory-of-Mind (ToM) in 15 high-functioning adolescents and adults with autism and 15 typically developing control participants. Participants viewed a series of comic strip vignettes in the MRI scanner and were asked to choose the most logical end to the story from three alternatives, separately for trials involving physical and intentional causality. The mean time series, extracted from 18 activated regions of interest, were processed using a multivariate autoregressive model (MVAR) to obtain the causality matrices for each of the 30 participants. These causal connectivity weights, along with assessment scores, functional connectivity values, and fractional anisotropy obtained from DTI data for each participant, were submitted to a recursive cluster elimination based support vector machine classifier to determine the accuracy with which the classifier can predict a novel participant's group membership (autism or control). We found a maximum classification accuracy of 95.9% with 19 features which had the highest discriminative ability between the groups. All of the 19 features were effective connectivity paths, indicating that causal information may be critical in discriminating between autism and control groups. These effective connectivity paths were also found to be significantly greater in controls as compared to ASD participants and consisted predominantly of outputs from the fusiform face area and middle temporal gyrus indicating impaired connectivity in ASD participants, particularly in the social brain areas. These findings collectively point toward the fact that alterations in causal connectivity in the brain in ASD could serve as a potential non-invasive neuroimaging signature for autism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The default mode network (DMN) is a collection of brain areas found to be consistently deactivated during task performance. Previous neuroimaging studies of resting state have revealed reduced task-related deactivation of this network in autism. We investigated the DMN in 13 high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and 14 typically developing control participants during three fMRI studies (two language tasks and a Theory-of-Mind (ToM) task). Each study had separate blocks of fixation/resting baseline. The data from the task blocks and fixation blocks were collated to examine deactivation and functional connectivity. Deficits in the deactivation of the DMN in individuals with ASD were specific only to the ToM task, with no group differences in deactivation during the language tasks or a combined language and self-other discrimination task. During rest blocks following the ToM task, the ASD group showed less deactivation than the control group in a number of DMN regions, including medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior cingulate gyrus/precuneus. In addition, we found weaker functional connectivity of the MPFC in individuals with ASD compared to controls. Furthermore, we were able to reliably classify participants into ASD or typically developing control groups based on both the whole-brain and seed-based connectivity patterns with accuracy up to 96.3%. These findings indicate that deactivation and connectivity of the DMN were altered in individuals with ASD. In addition, these findings suggest that the deficits in DMN connectivity could be a neural signature that can be used for classifying an individual as belonging to the ASD group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While deficits in imitation had been reported in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), its exact nature remains unclear. A dysfunction in mirroring mechanisms (through action imitation) has been proposed by some studies to explain this, although some recent evidence points against this hypothesis. The current study used behavior and functional MRI to examine the integrated functioning of the regions that are considered part of the Action Imitation network (AIN) in children and adolescents with ASD during a motor imitation task. Fourteen ASD and 15 age-and-IQ-matched typically developing (TD) children were asked to imitate a series of hand gestures in the MRI scanner. Intact performance on imitation (accurate imitation of hand gestures outside the scanner) in both ASD and TD groups was accompanied by significantly lower activity in ASD participants, relative to TD, in right angular gyrus, precentral gyrus, and left middle cingulate. In addition, autism traits were found to be significantly correlated with activation in the right angular gyrus. Overall, the findings of this study support the role of AIN in imitation and a potential difference in the recruitment of this network in ASD children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) is a leading cause of late life pain and disability, and non-Hispanic black (NHB) adults experience greater OA-related pain and disability than non-Hispanic whites (NHWs). Recent evidence implicates psychosocial stress, cognitive-attentional processes, and altered central pain processing as contributors to greater OA-related pain and disability among NHBs. To address these ethnic/race disparities, this clinical trial will test whether a mindfulness intervention (Breathing and Attention Training, BAT) combined with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) will enhance pain modulatory balance and pain-related brain function, reduce clinical pain, and attenuate ethnic differences therein, among NHBs and NHWs with knee OA. Participants will complete assessments of clinical pain, function, psychosocial measures, and quantitative sensory testing (QST), including mechanical temporal summation and conditioned pain modulation. Neuroimaging will be performed to examine pain-related brain structure and function. Then, participants will be randomized to one of four groups created by crossing two BAT conditions (Real vs. Sham) with two tDCS conditions (Real vs. Sham). Participants will then undergo five treatment sessions during which the assigned BAT and tDCS interventions will be delivered concurrently for 20 min over one week. After the fifth intervention session, participants will undergo assessments of clinical pain and function, QST and neuroimaging identical to the pretreatment measures, and monthly follow-up assessments of pain will be conducted for three months. This will be the first study to determine whether mindfulness and tDCS treatments will show additive or synergistic effects when combined, and whether treatment effects differ across ethnic/race groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetic resonance imaging of hippocampal internal architecture (HIA) at 3T is challenging. HIA is defined by layers of gray and white matter that are less than 1 mm thick in the coronal plane. To visualize HIA, conventional MRI approaches have relied on sequences with high in-plane resolution (≤0.5 mm) but comparatively thick slices (2-5 mm). However, thicker slices are prone to volume averaging effects that result in loss of HIA clarity and blurring of the borders of the hippocampal subfields in up to 61% of slices as has been reported. In this work we describe an approach to hippocampal imaging that provides consistently high HIA clarity using a commonly available sequence and post-processing techniques that is flexible and may be applicable to any MRI platform. We refer to this approach as High Resolution Multiple Image Co-registration and Averaging (HR-MICRA). This approach uses a variable flip angle turbo spin echo sequence to repeatedly acquire a whole brain T2w image volume with high resolution in three dimensions in a relatively short amount of time, and then co-register the volumes to correct for movement and average the repeated scans to improve SNR. We compared the averages of 4, 9, and 16 individual scans in 20 healthy controls using a published HIA clarity rating scale. In the body of the hippocampus, the proportion of slices with good or excellent HIA clarity was 90%, 83%, and 67% for the 16x, 9x, and 4x HR-MICRA images, respectively. Using the 4x HR-MICRA images as a baseline, the 9x HR-MICRA images were 2.6 times and 16x HR-MICRA images were 3.2 times more likely to have high HIA ratings ( p < 0.001) across all hippocampal segments (head, body, and tail). The thin slices of the HR-MICRA images allow reformatting in any plane with clear visualization of hippocampal dentation in the sagittal plane. Clear and consistent visualization of HIA will allow application of this technique to future hippocampal structure research, as well as more precise manual or automated segmentation., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ver Hoef, Deshpande, Cure, Selladurai, Beattie, Kennedy, Knowlton and Szaflarski.)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder found to have widespread alterations in the function and synchrony of brain regions. These differences may underlie alterations in microstructural organization, such as in white matter pathways. To investigate the diffusion of major white matter tracts, the current study examined multiple indices of white matter diffusion in 42 children and adults with ASD and 44 typically developing (TD) age- and IQ-matched peers using diffusion tensor imaging. Diffusivity measures were compared between groups for the following tracts: bilateral cingulum bundle, corpus callosum, inferior longitudinal fasciculus, superior longitudinal fasciculus, and uncinate fasciculus. Results indicate a significant reduction in fractional anisotropy (FA) for the left superior longitudinal fasciculus (LSLF) in ASD children and adults compared with TD peers. A significant increase in radial diffusivity for ASD participants was also found in the same cluster along the LSLF. In addition, a significant positive correlation emerged for all subjects between FA for the LSLF and age, with FA increasing with age. These findings point to a significant alteration in long-distance white matter connectivity in children and adults with ASD, potentially underscoring the relationship between alterations in white matter diffusion and the ASD phenotype. These results also suggest that the white matter alterations in autism may be subtle and related to the developmental trajectory., Competing Interests: Author Disclosure Statement No competing financial interests exist.

Deficits in language comprehension have been widely reported in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), with behavioral and neuroimaging studies finding increased reliance on visuospatial processing to aid in language comprehension. However, no study to date, has taken advantage of this strength in visuospatial processing to improve language comprehension difficulties in ASD. This study used a translational neuroimaging approach to test the role of a visual imagery-based reading intervention in improving the brain circuitry underlying language processing in children with ASD. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in a longitudinal study design, was used to investigate intervention-related change in sentence comprehension, brain activation, and functional connectivity in three groups of participants (age 8-13 years): an experimental group of ASD children (ASD-EXP), a wait-list control group of ASD children (ASD-WLC), and a group of typically developing control children. After intervention, the ASD-EXP group showed significant increase in activity in visual and language areas and right-hemisphere language area homologues, putamen, and thalamus, suggestive of compensatory routes to increase proficiency in reading comprehension. Additionally, ASD children who had the most improvement in reading comprehension after intervention showed greater functional connectivity between left-hemisphere language areas, the middle temporal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus while reading high imagery sentences. Thus, the findings of this study, which support the principles of dual coding theory [Paivio 2007], suggest the potential of a strength-based reading intervention in changing brain responses and facilitating better reading comprehension in ASD children., (© 2015 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Background: The ability to interpret agents' intent from their actions is a vital skill in successful social interaction. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have been found to have difficulty in attributing intentions to others. The present study investigated the neural mechanisms of inferring intentions from actions in individuals with ASD., Methods: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired from 21 high-functioning young adults with ASD and 22 typically developing (TD) control participants, while making judgments about the means (how an action is performed) and intention (why an action is performed) of a model's actions., Results: Across both groups of participants, the middle and superior temporal cortex, extending to temporoparietal junction, and posterior cingulate cortex, responded significantly to inferring the intent of an action, while inferior parietal lobule and occipital cortices were active for judgments about the means of an action. Participants with ASD had significantly reduced activation in calcarine sulcus and significantly increased activation in left inferior frontal gyrus, compared to TD peers, while attending to the intentions of actions. Also, ASD participants had weaker functional connectivity between frontal and posterior temporal regions while processing intentions., Conclusions: These results suggest that processing actions and intentions may not be mutually exclusive, with reliance on mirroring and mentalizing mechanisms mediating action understanding. Overall, inferring information about others' actions involves activation of the mirror neuron system and theory-of-mind regions, and this activation (and the synchrony between activated brain regions) appears altered in young adults with ASD.