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The behavioural and cognitive difficulties of some adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) may increase their risk of contact with the criminal justice system (CJS) as a potential suspect. There has been limited investigation of ASD and offending and available evidence is mixed. A retrospective review was completed of medical records of 1570 adults (17-75 years old) who were referred for an ASD assessment over a 17-year period (April 2003 to February 2020). Of the adults diagnosed with ASD, 23% had previous contact with the CJS. Being male or diagnosed with co-occurring attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and/or psychotic disorder were risk factors for CJS contact. However, the rates of contact with the CJS or for specific offences in the ASD group were never higher than adults referred to our service but not diagnosed with ASD. We did not include a general population comparison group, therefore cannot say how rates of CJS contact in ASD compare with the general population. Further health services research for adults with ASD is warranted, as modifying the treatable risk factors (i.e. ADHD) could reduce contact with the CJS. In addition, joint working between CJS and mental health services could reduce the risk of adults with ASD having CJS contact.

Clinical trials of pharmacological candidates targeting the core features of autism have largely failed. This is despite evidence linking differences in multiple neurochemical systems to brain function in autism. While this has in part been explained by the heterogeneity of the autistic population, the field has largely relied upon association studies to link brain chemistry to function. The only way to directly establish that a neurotransmitter or neuromodulator is involved in a candidate brain function is to change it and observe a shift in that function. This experimental approach dominates preclinical neuroscience, but not human studies. There is little direct experimental evidence describing how neurochemical systems modulate information processing in the living human brain. Thus, our understanding of how neurochemical differences contribute to neurodiversity is limited, impeding our ability to translate findings from animal studies into humans. Here, we introduce our 'shiftability' paradigm, an approach to bridge the translational gap in autism research. We provide an overview of the guiding principles and methodologies we use to directly test the hypothesis that neurochemical systems function differently in autistic and non‐autistic individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Growing awareness of autism spectrum disorders has increased the demand for diagnostic services in adulthood. High rates of mental health problems have been reported in young people and adults with autism spectrum disorder. However, sampling and methodological issues mean prevalence estimates and conclusions about specificity in psychiatric co-morbidity in autism spectrum disorder remain unclear. A retrospective case review of 859 adults referred for assessment of autism spectrum disorder compares International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision diagnoses in those that met criteria for autism spectrum disorder (n = 474) with those that did not (n = 385). Rates of psychiatric diagnosis (>57%) were equivalent across both groups and exceeded general population rates for a number of conditions. The prevalence of anxiety disorders, particularly obsessive compulsive disorder, was significantly higher in adults with autism spectrum disorder than adults without autism spectrum disorder. Limitations of this observational clinic study, which may impact generalisability of the findings, include the lack of standardised structured psychiatric diagnostic assessments by assessors blind to autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and inter-rater reliability. The implications of this study highlight the need for careful consideration of mental health needs in all adults referred for autism spectrum disorder diagnosis.

The present study aimed to examine social attribution in children with high-functioning autism (HFA) and Asperger's syndrome (AS). A sample of 20 boys (9 with HFA and 11 with AS) and 20 age-matched controls were recruited for this study. All participated in two tasks measuring social attribution ability, the conventional Social Attribution Task (SAT) and a modified version with animals rather than shapes (mSAT). They also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests. Compared to typically developing controls, children with autism spectrum disorders were impaired on some measures in both SATs. However, group differences in "theory-of-mind" indices were only significant in the mSAT, with the ASD group performing more poorly than controls. In addition, the scores in person index of both versions of the SAT correlated with executive function in children with HFA/AS. The current study found the mSAT paradigm was especially sensitive to ToM difficulties in young Chinese children with HFA/AS. Social attribution in children with HFA/AS, unlike neurotypical children, was related to executive function ability, suggesting these psychological domains are not distinct in children with autism spectrum disorders. (Contains 5 tables.)

Background: Autism exists across a wide spectrum and there is considerable debate as to whether children with Asperger's syndrome, who have normal language milestones, should be considered to comprise a subgroup distinct other from high-functioning children with autism (HFA), who have a history of delayed language development. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of autism are in disagreement. One possible reason is that the diagnosis of autism takes precedence over Asperger's syndrome and a distinction in language acquisition is rarely made. We therefore planned to examine a whole brain hypothesis that the patterns of grey matter differences in Asperger's syndrome and HFA can be distinguished. Methods: We used voxel-based computational morphometry to map grey matter volume differences in 33 children with either Asperger's syndrome or high-functioning autism compared to 55 typical developing control children balanced for age, IQ, gender, maternal language and ethnicity. Results: Children with HFA had significantly smaller grey matter volumes in subcortical, posterior cingulate and precuneus regions than the Asperger's group. Compared to controls, children with HFA had smaller grey matter volumes in predominantly fronto-pallidal regions, while children with Asperger's had less grey matter in mainly bilateral caudate and left thalamus. In addition we found a significant negative correlation between the size of a grey matter cluster around BA44 language area and the age of acquisition of phrase speech in the children with HFA. When the groups were combined we confirmed a mixed picture of smaller grey matter volumes in frontal, basal ganglia, temporal and parietal regions. Conclusions: Our study suggests that the underlying neurobiology in HFA and Asperger's syndrome is at least partly discrete. Future studies should therefore consider the history of language acquisition as a valuable tool to refine investigation of aetiological factors and management options in pervasive developmental disorders.

Background: The question of whether Asperger syndrome can be distinguished from autism has attracted much debate and may even incur delay in diagnosis and intervention. Accordingly, there has been a proposal for Asperger syndrome to be subsumed under autism in the forthcoming Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, in 2013. One approach to resolve this question has been to adopt the criterion of absence of clinically significant language or cognitive delay--essentially, the 'absence of language delay.' To our knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies of people with autism to compare absence with presence of language delay. It capitalizes on the voxel-based morphometry (VBM) approach to systematically explore the whole brain for anatomic correlates of delay and no delay in language acquisition in people with autism spectrum disorders. Methods: We conducted a systematic search for VBM MRI studies of grey matter volume in people with autism. Studies with a majority (at least 70%) of participants with autism diagnoses and a history of language delay were assigned to the autism group (n = 151, control n = 190). Those with a majority (at least 70%) of individuals with autism diagnoses and no language delay were assigned to the Asperger syndrome group (n = 149, control n = 214). We entered study coordinates into anatomic likelihood estimation meta-analysis software with sampling size weighting to compare grey matter summary maps driven by Asperger syndrome or autism. Results: The summary autism grey matter map showed lower volumes in the cerebellum, right uncus, dorsal hippocampus and middle temporal gyrus compared with controls; grey matter volumes were greater in the bilateral caudate, prefrontal lobe and ventral temporal lobe. The summary Asperger syndrome map indicated lower grey matter volumes in the bilateral amygdala/hippocampal gyrus and prefrontal lobe, left occipital gyrus, right cerebellum, putamen and precuneus compared with controls; grey matter volumes were greater in more limited regions, including the bilateral inferior parietal lobule and the left fusiform gyrus. Both Asperger syndrome and autism studies reported volume increase in clusters in the ventral temporal lobe of the left hemisphere. Limitations: We assigned studies to autism and Asperger syndrome groups for separate analyses of the data and did not carry out a direct statistical group comparison. In addition, studies available for analysis did not capture the entire spectrum, therefore we cannot be certain that our findings apply to a wider population than that sampled. Conclusion: Whereas grey matter differences in people with Asperger syndrome compared with controls are sparser than those reported in studies of people with autism, the distribution and direction of differences in each category are distinctive., Introduction Wing's (1) seminal paper in 1981 describing Asperger syndrome spearheaded a concerted revival of research interest. In contending that Asperger syndrome and autism were similar, Wing disagreed with Asperger, [...]