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Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with a hyper‐focused visual attentional style, impacting higher‐order social and affective domains. The understanding of such peculiarity can benefit from the use of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of high‐resolution electroencephalography (EEG) data, which has proved to be a powerful technique to investigate the hidden neural dynamics orchestrating sensory and cognitive processes. Here, we recorded EEG in typically developing (TD) children and in children with ASD during a visuo‐spatial attentional task where attention was exogenously captured by a small (zoom‐in) or large (zoom‐out) cue in the visual field before the appearance of a target at different eccentricities. MVPA was performed both in the cue‐locked period, to reveal potential differences in the modulation of the attentional focus, and in the target‐locked period, to reveal potential cascade effects on stimulus processing. Cue‐locked MVPA revealed that while in the TD group the pattern of neural activity contained information about the cue mainly before the target appearance, the ASD group showed a temporally sustained and topographically diffuse significant decoding of the cue neural response even after the target onset, suggesting a delayed extinction of cue‐related neural activity. Crucially, this delayed extinction positively correlated with behavioral measures of attentional hyperfocusing. Results of target‐locked MVPA were coherent with a hyper‐focused attentional profile, highlighting an earlier and stronger decoding of target neural responses in small cue trials in the ASD group. The present findings document a spatially and temporally overrepresented encoding of visual information in ASD, which can constitute one of the main reasons behind their peculiar cognitive style. Lay Summary: This study unveils how incoming visual input is encoded at the neural level in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and how this encoding impacts on their attentional selection. Using multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of high‐resolution EEG data, we show that children with ASD exhibit a temporally prolonged and topographically broader overrepresentation of visual information, as compared to their typically developing peers. Such excessive stimulus encoding could in turn lead to difficulties in reorienting attentional resources to subsequent relevant incoming stimuli, leading to their peculiar hyperfocused attentional profile. This study not only provides new evidence about important neural mechanisms of visual information processing in ASD, but it also shows that MVPA approaches can detect neural dynamics that may remain otherwise largely blind to other univariate analyses approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with a topic that results still little discussed and which seems to be central to imagining what trasformations libraries will undergo in the near future. This is the concept of multifunctionality. Starting from the data analysis of the first three Istat Census’s editions, this concept was explored in relation to the characteristics of Italian libraries and thanks to a data driven approach a detailed geography is offered, reflecting variations that occurred between 2020 and 2022. The physiognomy of the libraries’s multifunctionality before and after the Covid-19 pandemic was therefore reconstructed. Thanks to the results of an ongoing survey, it was also possible to combine this study with a mapping of the so-called ‘new multidisciplinary and independent cultural centres’ which are widely spread nationwide and which seem to stand out precisely for their multifunctionality. By comparing different visions and analyses, the intention was to set up a comparative reflection betweenmultifunctional libraries and new cultural centers to discover the characteristics that make them contemporary places. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-level motor computations reflect abstract components far apart from the mere motor performance. Neural correlates of these computations have been explored both in nonhuman and human primates, supporting the idea that our brain recruits complex nodes for motor representations. Of note, these computations have exciting implications for social cognition, and they also entail important challenges in the context of autism. Here, we focus on these challenges benefiting from recent studies addressing motor interference, motor resonance, and high-level motor planning. In addition, we suggest new ideas about how one maps and shares the (motor) space with others. Taken together, these issues inspire intriguing and fascinating questions about the social tendency of our high-level motor computations, and this tendency may indicate that we are “motorically” wired to others. Thus, after furnishing preliminary insights on putative neural nodes involved in these computations, we focus on how the hypothesized social nature of high-level motor computations may be anomalous or limited in autism, and why this represents a critical challenge for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with a hyper-focused visual attentional style, impacting higher-order social and affective domains. The understanding of such peculiarity can benefit from the use of multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) of high-resolution electroencephalography (EEG) data, which has proved to be a powerful technique to investigate the hidden neural dynamics orchestrating sensory and cognitive processes. Here, we recorded EEG in typically developing (TD) children and in children with ASD during a visuo-spatial attentional task where attention was exogenously captured by a small (zoom-in) or large (zoom-out) cue in the visual field before the appearance of a target at different eccentricities. MVPA was performed both in the cue-locked period, to reveal potential differences in the modulation of the attentional focus, and in the target-locked period, to reveal potential cascade effects on stimulus processing. Cue-locked MVPA revealed that while in the TD group the pattern of neural activity contained information about the cue mainly before the target appearance, the ASD group showed a temporally sustained and topographically diffuse significant decoding of the cue neural response even after the target onset, suggesting a delayed extinction of cue-related neural activity. Crucially, this delayed extinction positively correlated with behavioral measures of attentional hyperfocusing. Results of target-locked MVPA were coherent with a hyper-focused attentional profile, highlighting an earlier and stronger decoding of target neural responses in small cue trials in the ASD group. The present findings document a spatially and temporally overrepresented encoding of visual information in ASD, which can constitute one of the main reasons behind their peculiar cognitive style., (© 2023 The Authors. Autism Research published by International Society for Autism Research and Wiley Periodicals LLC.)