Beta oscillations precede joint attention and correlate with mentalization in typical development and autism, 2019
A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share a... more A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share attention on an object with another person. JA precedes the development of the capacity to attribute mental states to others (i.e., mentalization or theory of mind). The neural mechanisms involved in the development of mentalization are not fully understood. Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (~500ms after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction.
Social skills refer to a wide group of abilities that allow us to interact and communicate with o... more Social skills refer to a wide group of abilities that allow us to interact and communicate with others. Children learn how to solve social situations by predicting and understanding other’s behaviors. The way in which humans learn to interact successfully with others encompasses a complex interaction between neural, behavioral, and environmental elements. These have a role in the accomplishment of positive developmental outcomes, including peer acceptance, academic achievement, and mental health. All these social abilities depend on widespread brain networks that are recently being studied by neuroscience. In this paper, we will first review the studies on this topic, aiming to clarify the behavioral and neural mechanisms related to the acquisition of social skills during infancy and their appearance in time. Second, we will briefly describe how developmental diseases like Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) can inform about the neurobiological mechanisms of social skills.We finally sketch a general framework for the elaboration of cognitive models in order to facilitate the comprehension of human social development.
A dysfunction in the excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) coordination in neuronal assembly has been propo... more A dysfunction in the excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) coordination in neuronal assembly has been proposed as a possible neurobiological mechanism of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the potential impact of this mechanism in cognitive performance is not fully explored. Since the main consequence of E/I dysfunction is an impairment in oscillatory activity and its underlying cognitive computations, we assessed the electroencephalographic activity of ASD and typically developing (TD) subjects during a working-memory task. We found that ASD subjects committed more errors than TD subjects. Moreover, TD subjects demonstrated a parametric modulation in the power of alpha and theta band while ASD subjects did not demonstrate significant modulations. The preceding leads to significant differences between the groups in both the alpha power placed on the occipital cortex and the theta power placed on the left premotor and the right prefrontal cortex. The impaired theta modulation correlated with autistic symptoms. The results indicated that ASD may present an alteration in the recruitment of the oscillatory activity during working-memory, and this alteration could be related to the physiopathology of the disorder.
Handbook of Social Behavior and Skills in Children , 2017
Social nature is a characteristic that many species of living organisms might share. However, hum... more Social nature is a characteristic that many species of living organisms might share. However, humans have a series of features which sets them apart from any other living species, such as thinking about others’ intentions and actions and the ability to think about their inner world. How this social trait is developed and how its development trajectory occurs have been a topic of interest for social sciences and social neuroscience since the past decades. Social cognition, behavior, and brain are concepts that come to light in order to disentangle this theme. This chapter addresses the timeline of social functioning development during childhood, focusing mainly on behaviors that could be understood as building blocks for more complex social behaviors acquired later in life. According to this aim, we will describe how abilities such as biological motion preference, perception of faces, mutual gaze, gaze following, joint attention, perspective taking, mentalization, and decision making are crucial for the development of social skills during childhood. Furthermore, we will review neurobiological mechanisms related to early social development through the analysis of biological markers present in electroencephalography and imaging studies. We will analyze how social development might deviate from the expected course in disorders such as autism and attentional deficit disorder as well as how conditions such as blindness, deafness, and specific language impairment could impact social development. We highlight how an integrative understanding of development contributes to a better comprehension of human social development functioning inasmuch as it considers it an ever-increasing complexity phenomenon.
Investigaciones en psicología clínica infanto juvenil : primer compendio de tesis del Magister en Psicología, mención psicología clínica infanto juvenil, 2011
La presente tesis aborda la descripción y análisis de las diferencias de la habilidad de la atenc... more La presente tesis aborda la descripción y análisis de las diferencias de la habilidad de la atención conjunta entre niños preescolares que presentan un trastorno autista con niños que presentan trastornos de la expresión y/o comprensión del lenguaje y con niños que presentan un desarrollo normal, aceptando la hipótesis de que el déficit de la atención conjunta es un elemento diferencial entre un trastorno de autismo, un trastorno específico del lenguaje y un desarrollo normal. Para ello, el estudio presenta una revisión teórica y conceptual de ambos trastornos en un intento por sistematizar y actualizar los hallazgos y conocimientos asociados a estos desórdenes del desarrollo, dado que el marco teórico acerca de ellos se revela fragmentario y no integrado, lo que ha contribuido a la desvinculación teórica entre las distintas disciplinas que han intentado dar cuenta de ellos. Es en este punto donde radica, en parte, la relevancia de la presente tesis, dado que se presenta como un esfuerzo real por contribuir tanto a la comprensión sistematizada del cuadro autista como a los diagnósticos diferenciales con cuadros como los trastornos del lenguaje, en miras de poder aclarar y definir criterios clínicos que contribuyan a la detección, el diagnóstico, la prevención y el tratamiento. Asimismo, en acuerdo con la importancia del diagnóstico precoz es que la muestra elegida para el presente estudio está conformada por niños de edades comprendidas entre los 2 y 5 años, donde el escenario epidemiológico también resulta inespecífico. La investigación aquí descrita es un estudio de tipo cuantitativo y transversal, entre una muestra de 30 díadas madre-hijo de niños hombres cuyas edades se encuentran entre los 2 y 5 años; 10 de los cuales son niños que presentan un diagnóstico de trastorno de la expresión y/o comprensión del lenguaje; 10 que presentan un desarrollo normal; y 10 niños con diagnóstico de autismo, según los criterios diagnósticos descritos en la Décima Revisión de la Clasificación Internacional de las Enfermedades Mentales y del comportamiento CIE-10 (1992). El diseño metodológico que siguió el estudio es el de una investigación no experimental, de carácter expost-facto y retrospectivo; de carácter descriptivo y comparativo, dado que pretende establecer diferencias de las variables entre los grupos descritos sin atribuir causalidad alguna (Hernández et. al., 1991). La evaluación de las variables medidas contempló para cada niño una sesión de juego libre con la madre de duración 30 minutos, y una sesión de evaluación con la psicóloga responsable de la presente tesis para la aplicación de pruebas específicas. En ambas sesiones se evaluaron las variables de conductas de inicio y respuesta de la atención conjunta por parte del niño, siguiendo los aportes descritos en “A Manual for the Abridged Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS)” creado por Mundy (et. al., 2003) y utilizado por algunas de las investigaciones de lenguaje (Travis et. al., 2001; Delgado et. al., 2002; Siller et. al., 2002; Delgado amp; Delgado, 2002) en niños de desarrollo normal cuyas edades oscilan entre los 8 y 30 meses de edad, y en niños con retrasos del desarrollo cuyas edades verbales caen en rangos entre dichas edades (Mundy, 2003). Dichas pruebas fueron adaptadas y traducidas al español por la psicóloga responsable de esta tesis. Los resultados obtenidos fueron analizados siguiendo la prueba estadística del Distribución de t de Student, a partir de los cuales pudo comprobarse la hipótesis planteada en la presente tesis, a saber, que las alteraciones presentes en niños preescolares entre 2 y 5 años son un elemento diferencial entre los trastornos del espectro autista, los trastornos específicos del lenguaje y el desarrollo normal. Asimismo, a partir de los datos analizados pudo concluirse que las principales alteraciones en la habilidad de la atención conjunta presentes únicamente en los niños autistas y que contribuyen así al diagnóstico diferencial, son: a) Conductas de inicio de la atención conjunta: • Disminución significativa de la cantidad de alternancias visuales. • Disminución significativa de la cantidad de conductas de apuntar. b) Conducta de respuesta a la atención conjunta: • Alteración en la capacidad de seguimiento de la mirada de un punto próximo. • Alteración en la capacidad de seguimiento de la mirada de un punto distal. Finalmente, la presente tesis discute los posibles aportes del estudio y sus resultados, esperando contribuir al conocimiento teórico y práctico de elementos clínicos relevantes para el proceso de diagnóstico, a través de la entrega de una sistematización de aquellas conductas y comportamientos que puedan ayudar a la comprensión de la psicología y de la psicopatología infantil.
Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) defines heritable features present in unaffected relatives of indi... more Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) defines heritable features present in unaffected relatives of individuals with autism. BAP affects face perception, an impairment associated with the magnocellular (M) visual pathway that processes information of low spatial frequency and the parvocellular (P) visual pathway that processes information of high spatial frequency. Here we tested the hypothesis that parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pASD), who are BAP candidates, present altered M and P pathways integration for the processing of facial emotions information as compared to parents of typically developing children (pTD). For this end, we carried out electroencephalographic recordings in pTD and pASD, while they had to recognize emotions of face pictures composed by the same or different emotions (happiness or anger) presented in different spatial frequencies. We found no significant differences in the accuracy between groups but lower amplitude in a late frontoparietal potential activity, when happiness emotion was displayed in both spatial frequencies in pASD. Source analysis showed a difference in the right posterior part of the superior temporal region. These results reveal an alteration in brain processing of facial emotion in BAP that could be a neuronal marker of ASD.
Beta oscillations precede joint attention and correlate with mentalization in typical development and autism, 2019
A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share a... more A precursor of adult social functioning is joint attention (JA), which is the capacity to share attention on an object with another person. JA precedes the development of the capacity to attribute mental states to others (i.e., mentalization or theory of mind). The neural mechanisms involved in the development of mentalization are not fully understood. Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (~500ms after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction.
Social skills refer to a wide group of abilities that allow us to interact and communicate with o... more Social skills refer to a wide group of abilities that allow us to interact and communicate with others. Children learn how to solve social situations by predicting and understanding other’s behaviors. The way in which humans learn to interact successfully with others encompasses a complex interaction between neural, behavioral, and environmental elements. These have a role in the accomplishment of positive developmental outcomes, including peer acceptance, academic achievement, and mental health. All these social abilities depend on widespread brain networks that are recently being studied by neuroscience. In this paper, we will first review the studies on this topic, aiming to clarify the behavioral and neural mechanisms related to the acquisition of social skills during infancy and their appearance in time. Second, we will briefly describe how developmental diseases like Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) can inform about the neurobiological mechanisms of social skills.We finally sketch a general framework for the elaboration of cognitive models in order to facilitate the comprehension of human social development.
A dysfunction in the excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) coordination in neuronal assembly has been propo... more A dysfunction in the excitatory–inhibitory (E/I) coordination in neuronal assembly has been proposed as a possible neurobiological mechanism of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). However, the potential impact of this mechanism in cognitive performance is not fully explored. Since the main consequence of E/I dysfunction is an impairment in oscillatory activity and its underlying cognitive computations, we assessed the electroencephalographic activity of ASD and typically developing (TD) subjects during a working-memory task. We found that ASD subjects committed more errors than TD subjects. Moreover, TD subjects demonstrated a parametric modulation in the power of alpha and theta band while ASD subjects did not demonstrate significant modulations. The preceding leads to significant differences between the groups in both the alpha power placed on the occipital cortex and the theta power placed on the left premotor and the right prefrontal cortex. The impaired theta modulation correlated with autistic symptoms. The results indicated that ASD may present an alteration in the recruitment of the oscillatory activity during working-memory, and this alteration could be related to the physiopathology of the disorder.
Handbook of Social Behavior and Skills in Children , 2017
Social nature is a characteristic that many species of living organisms might share. However, hum... more Social nature is a characteristic that many species of living organisms might share. However, humans have a series of features which sets them apart from any other living species, such as thinking about others’ intentions and actions and the ability to think about their inner world. How this social trait is developed and how its development trajectory occurs have been a topic of interest for social sciences and social neuroscience since the past decades. Social cognition, behavior, and brain are concepts that come to light in order to disentangle this theme. This chapter addresses the timeline of social functioning development during childhood, focusing mainly on behaviors that could be understood as building blocks for more complex social behaviors acquired later in life. According to this aim, we will describe how abilities such as biological motion preference, perception of faces, mutual gaze, gaze following, joint attention, perspective taking, mentalization, and decision making are crucial for the development of social skills during childhood. Furthermore, we will review neurobiological mechanisms related to early social development through the analysis of biological markers present in electroencephalography and imaging studies. We will analyze how social development might deviate from the expected course in disorders such as autism and attentional deficit disorder as well as how conditions such as blindness, deafness, and specific language impairment could impact social development. We highlight how an integrative understanding of development contributes to a better comprehension of human social development functioning inasmuch as it considers it an ever-increasing complexity phenomenon.
Investigaciones en psicología clínica infanto juvenil : primer compendio de tesis del Magister en Psicología, mención psicología clínica infanto juvenil, 2011
La presente tesis aborda la descripción y análisis de las diferencias de la habilidad de la atenc... more La presente tesis aborda la descripción y análisis de las diferencias de la habilidad de la atención conjunta entre niños preescolares que presentan un trastorno autista con niños que presentan trastornos de la expresión y/o comprensión del lenguaje y con niños que presentan un desarrollo normal, aceptando la hipótesis de que el déficit de la atención conjunta es un elemento diferencial entre un trastorno de autismo, un trastorno específico del lenguaje y un desarrollo normal. Para ello, el estudio presenta una revisión teórica y conceptual de ambos trastornos en un intento por sistematizar y actualizar los hallazgos y conocimientos asociados a estos desórdenes del desarrollo, dado que el marco teórico acerca de ellos se revela fragmentario y no integrado, lo que ha contribuido a la desvinculación teórica entre las distintas disciplinas que han intentado dar cuenta de ellos. Es en este punto donde radica, en parte, la relevancia de la presente tesis, dado que se presenta como un esfuerzo real por contribuir tanto a la comprensión sistematizada del cuadro autista como a los diagnósticos diferenciales con cuadros como los trastornos del lenguaje, en miras de poder aclarar y definir criterios clínicos que contribuyan a la detección, el diagnóstico, la prevención y el tratamiento. Asimismo, en acuerdo con la importancia del diagnóstico precoz es que la muestra elegida para el presente estudio está conformada por niños de edades comprendidas entre los 2 y 5 años, donde el escenario epidemiológico también resulta inespecífico. La investigación aquí descrita es un estudio de tipo cuantitativo y transversal, entre una muestra de 30 díadas madre-hijo de niños hombres cuyas edades se encuentran entre los 2 y 5 años; 10 de los cuales son niños que presentan un diagnóstico de trastorno de la expresión y/o comprensión del lenguaje; 10 que presentan un desarrollo normal; y 10 niños con diagnóstico de autismo, según los criterios diagnósticos descritos en la Décima Revisión de la Clasificación Internacional de las Enfermedades Mentales y del comportamiento CIE-10 (1992). El diseño metodológico que siguió el estudio es el de una investigación no experimental, de carácter expost-facto y retrospectivo; de carácter descriptivo y comparativo, dado que pretende establecer diferencias de las variables entre los grupos descritos sin atribuir causalidad alguna (Hernández et. al., 1991). La evaluación de las variables medidas contempló para cada niño una sesión de juego libre con la madre de duración 30 minutos, y una sesión de evaluación con la psicóloga responsable de la presente tesis para la aplicación de pruebas específicas. En ambas sesiones se evaluaron las variables de conductas de inicio y respuesta de la atención conjunta por parte del niño, siguiendo los aportes descritos en “A Manual for the Abridged Early Social Communication Scales (ESCS)” creado por Mundy (et. al., 2003) y utilizado por algunas de las investigaciones de lenguaje (Travis et. al., 2001; Delgado et. al., 2002; Siller et. al., 2002; Delgado amp; Delgado, 2002) en niños de desarrollo normal cuyas edades oscilan entre los 8 y 30 meses de edad, y en niños con retrasos del desarrollo cuyas edades verbales caen en rangos entre dichas edades (Mundy, 2003). Dichas pruebas fueron adaptadas y traducidas al español por la psicóloga responsable de esta tesis. Los resultados obtenidos fueron analizados siguiendo la prueba estadística del Distribución de t de Student, a partir de los cuales pudo comprobarse la hipótesis planteada en la presente tesis, a saber, que las alteraciones presentes en niños preescolares entre 2 y 5 años son un elemento diferencial entre los trastornos del espectro autista, los trastornos específicos del lenguaje y el desarrollo normal. Asimismo, a partir de los datos analizados pudo concluirse que las principales alteraciones en la habilidad de la atención conjunta presentes únicamente en los niños autistas y que contribuyen así al diagnóstico diferencial, son: a) Conductas de inicio de la atención conjunta: • Disminución significativa de la cantidad de alternancias visuales. • Disminución significativa de la cantidad de conductas de apuntar. b) Conducta de respuesta a la atención conjunta: • Alteración en la capacidad de seguimiento de la mirada de un punto próximo. • Alteración en la capacidad de seguimiento de la mirada de un punto distal. Finalmente, la presente tesis discute los posibles aportes del estudio y sus resultados, esperando contribuir al conocimiento teórico y práctico de elementos clínicos relevantes para el proceso de diagnóstico, a través de la entrega de una sistematización de aquellas conductas y comportamientos que puedan ayudar a la comprensión de la psicología y de la psicopatología infantil.
Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) defines heritable features present in unaffected relatives of indi... more Broader Autism Phenotype (BAP) defines heritable features present in unaffected relatives of individuals with autism. BAP affects face perception, an impairment associated with the magnocellular (M) visual pathway that processes information of low spatial frequency and the parvocellular (P) visual pathway that processes information of high spatial frequency. Here we tested the hypothesis that parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pASD), who are BAP candidates, present altered M and P pathways integration for the processing of facial emotions information as compared to parents of typically developing children (pTD). For this end, we carried out electroencephalographic recordings in pTD and pASD, while they had to recognize emotions of face pictures composed by the same or different emotions (happiness or anger) presented in different spatial frequencies. We found no significant differences in the accuracy between groups but lower amplitude in a late frontoparietal potential activity, when happiness emotion was displayed in both spatial frequencies in pASD. Source analysis showed a difference in the right posterior part of the superior temporal region. These results reveal an alteration in brain processing of facial emotion in BAP that could be a neuronal marker of ASD.
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Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (~500ms after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction.
oscillatory activity during working-memory, and this alteration could be related to the physiopathology of the disorder.
Electroencephalographic recordings were made of children while they watched stimuli on a screen and their interaction with the experimenter was assessed. We tested whether neuronal activity preceding JA correlates with mentalization in typically developing (TD) children and whether this activity is impaired in children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) who evidence deficits in JA and mentalization skills. Both groups exhibited JA behavior with comparable frequency. TD children displayed a higher amplitude of negative central (Nc) event-related potential preceding JA behavior (~500ms after stimuli presentation), than did the ASD group. Previous to JA behavior, TD children demonstrated beta oscillatory activity in the temporoparietal region, while ASD children did not show an increase in beta activity. In both groups, the beta power correlated with mentalization, suggesting that this specific neuronal mechanism is involved in mentalization, which used during social interaction.
oscillatory activity during working-memory, and this alteration could be related to the physiopathology of the disorder.