By Bahar Gholipour, Children with Asperger's syndrome show patterns of brain connectivity distinct from those of children with autism, according to a new study. The findings suggest the two conditions, which are now in one category in the new psychiatry diagnostic manual, may be biologically different. The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG) recordings to measure the amount of signaling occurring between brain areas in children. They had previously used this measure of brain connectivity to develop a test that could distinguish between children with autism and normally developing children. "We looked at a group of 26 children with Asperger's, to see whether measures of brain connectivity would indicate they're part of autism group, or they stood separately," said study researcher Dr. Frank Duffy, a neurologist at Boston's Children Hospital. The study also included more than 400 children with autism, and about 550 normally developing children, who served as controls. At first, the test showed that children with Asperger's and those with autism were similar: both showed weaker connections, compared with normal children, in a region of the brain's left hemisphere called the arcuate fasciculus, which is involved in language. However, when looking at connectivity between other parts of the brain, the researchers saw differences. Connections between several regions in the left hemisphere were stronger in children with Asperger's than in both children with autism and normally developing children. © 2013 Yahoo! Inc

Keyword: Autism; Brain imaging
Link ID: 18461 - Posted: 08.06.2013

By NICK BILTON Scientists haven’t yet found a way to mend a broken heart, but they’re edging closer to manipulating memory and downloading instructions from a computer right into a brain. Researchers from the Riken-M.I.T. Center for Neural Circuit Genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology took us closer to this science-fiction world of brain tweaking last week when they said they were able to create a false memory in a mouse. The scientists reported in the journal Science that they caused mice to remember receiving an electrical shock in one location, when in reality they were zapped in a completely different place. The researchers weren’t able to create entirely new thoughts, but they applied good or bad feelings to memories that already existed. “It wasn’t so much writing a memory from scratch, it was basically connecting two different types of memories. We took a neutral memory, and we artificially updated that to make it a negative memory,” said Steve Ramirez, one of the M.I.T. neuroscientists on the project. It may sound insignificant and perhaps not a nice way to treat mice, but it is not a dramatic leap to imagine that one day this research could lead to computer-manipulation of the mind for things like the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, Mr. Ramirez said. Technologists are already working on brain-computer interfaces, which will allow us to interact with our smartphones and computers simply by using our minds. And there are already gadgets that read our thoughts and allow us to do things like dodge virtual objects in a computer game or turn switches on and off with a thought. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Robotics; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18460 - Posted: 08.06.2013

by Helen Thomson We all get lost sometimes. Luckily, specialised cells in the brain that help animals find their way have now been identified in humans for the first time. The discovery could lead to better treatments for people who have problems navigating. We know that animals use three cell types to navigate the world. Direction cells fire only when an animal is facing a particular direction, place cells fire only in a particular location, and grid cells fire at regular intervals as an animal moves around. To understand how grid cells work, imagine the carpet in front of you has a grid pattern of interlocking triangles. One grid cell will fire whenever you reach the corner of any triangle in that grid. Shift the grid pattern along ever so slightly to another section of the carpet, and another grid cell will be responsible for firing every time you reach the corners of that grid's triangles – and so on. Grid cells send information to place cells and both kinds of cell send information to the hippocampus – responsible for memory formation. Together, this network of activity helps form a mental representation of an animal's location in its environment. Direction and place cells have been identified in humans but the existence of grid cells has so far only been hinted at in brain scans. To find out whether these cells do exist in humans, Joshua Jacobs at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and colleagues tested 14 people who had already had electrodes implanted in their brains for epilepsy therapy. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18459 - Posted: 08.05.2013

By Luciana Gravotta Small gains now or big rewards later? The conundrum plagues every decision we make, whether we are investing or dieting. Now researchers find that men and women use different strategies to make such choices. Researchers use gambling games to understand what we do when immediate rewards are pitted against long-term gains. Most of these games find no major differences in how men and women play. An experimental setup called the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), however, finds consistent—and large—differences between the behavior of men and women: men are better at figuring out the strategy that reaps the bigger payoff. Players are given four decks of cards, and they choose one card at a time from any deck they want. Each card has a win or loss amount on it, and each deck has its own unique payout pattern. Two of the decks contain cards that dole out large or frequent rewards, but consistently choosing cards from these decks leads to losses in the long run. The other two decks provide a modest amount of cash per win but less loss over time, so they offer long-term gains for players who pick from them most frequently. These patterns are carefully obscured so that the winning strategy is not obvious. A review published in February in Behavioural Brain Research finds that men focus on the big picture, watching their total earnings and quickly homing in on which of the decks will lead to gains in the long run. Women focus on details such as the frequencies of wins and losses for each deck, missing the overall impact each deck has on their total balance. Sensitive to losses, women tend to switch to a different deck as soon as they are pinged with a setback, making it more difficult for them to identify the prize deck. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 18458 - Posted: 08.05.2013

By CHRISTINE MONTROSS PROVIDENCE, R.I. — M is a 33-year old woman who swallowed silverware. She wasn’t psychotic, or out of touch with reality. She knew it was not a good idea to swallow forks and knives and she wasn’t trying to kill herself. In fact, each time she ingested utensils, she went to the emergency room so that doctors could remove them from her esophagus and stomach. Then the hospital transferred M to the psychiatric unit, where she was assigned to my care. Enlarge This Image Robert Frank Hunter When I met M she had already been hospitalized 72 times. She’d swallowed silverware — and batteries — before. Sometimes she inserted sharp objects or large doses of medication into her vagina. There are psychiatric patients who cut or burn themselves in an attempt to relieve mental anguish; M did both of these things, too, periodically, but she had primarily developed a maladaptive habit of ingesting or inserting dangerous objects into her body as a means of coping with stress. Each time, she said, she felt better afterward. Then she brought herself to the emergency room for treatment. M’s case is dramatic. But she is one of countless psychiatric patients who have nowhere to turn for care, other than the E.R. It is well known that millions of uninsured Americans, who can’t afford regular medical care, use the country’s emergency rooms for primary health care. The costs — to patients’ health, to their wallets, and to the health care system — are well documented. Less visible is the grievous effect this shift is having on psychiatric care and on the mentally ill. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 18457 - Posted: 08.05.2013

Steve Connor A gene thought to be involved in nerve development can double the risk of schizophrenia when it is damaged, according to a pioneering study into one of most costly mental illnesses. The findings are further evidence of a genetic basis for schizophrenia – which affects about one in every 100 people at some time of their lives – and could lead to a greater understanding of the physical faults that might lead to the psychiatric disorder in some susceptible people. The chronic, long-term illness, which results in persistent delusions and hallucinations, is estimated to cost the NHS about £2bn a year in care and treatment alone. But the extra burden on patients, their families and the criminal justice system is thought to be at least twice as high. Scientists said the genetic fault they have discovered is also associated with a separate inherited disorder that results in learning difficulties and autism. This link, they said, is probably the result of them sharing a common biological pathway at the genetic level. The gene linked to schizophrenia, called TOP3B, is normally involved in unwinding the DNA double helix to allow other genes to function, especially when the nerve cells of the brain are developing, both in the womb and during the crucial first years of life. © independent.co.uk

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18456 - Posted: 08.05.2013

By Andrea Anderson In spring a band of brainy rodents made headlines for zipping through mazes and mastering memory tricks. Scientists credited the impressive intellectual feats to human cells transplanted into their brains shortly after birth. But the increased mental muster did not come from neurons, the lanky nerve cells that swap electrical signals and stimulate muscles. The mice benefited from human stem cells called glial progenitors, immature cells poised to become astrocytes and other glia cells, the supposed support cells of the brain. Astrocytes are known for mopping up excess neuro-transmitters and maintaining balance in brain systems. During the past couple of decades, however, researchers started suspecting astrocytes of making more complex cognitive contributions. In the 1990s the cells got caught using calcium to accomplish a form of nonelectrical signaling. Studies since then have revealed how extensively astrocytes interact with neurons, even coordinating their activity in some cases. Perhaps even more intriguing, our astrocytes are enormous compared with the astrocytes of other animals—20 times larger than rodent astrocytes—and they make contact with millions of neurons apiece. Neurons, on the other hand, are nearly identical in all mammals, from rodents to great apes like us. Such clues suggest astrocytes could be evolutionary contributors to our outsized intellect. The new study, published in March in Cell Stem Cell, tested this hypothesis. A subset of the implanted human stem cells matured into rotund, humanlike astrocytes in the animals' brains, taking over operations from the native mouse astrocytes. When tested under a microscope, these human astrocytes accomplished calcium signaling at least three times faster than the mouse astrocytes did. The enhanced mice masterfully memorized new objects, swiftly learned to link certain sounds or situations to an unpleasant foot shock, and displayed unusually savvy maze navigation—signs of mental acuity that surpassed skills exhibited by either typical mice or mice transplanted with glial progenitor cells from their own species. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Glia; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18455 - Posted: 08.05.2013

Josh Howgego When it comes to our sense of smell, we are all experiencing the world in very different ways. Scientists already know that humans' sensitivity to smelly molecules varies considerably from person to person (see: 'Soapy taste of coriander linked to genetic variants'). But evidence that genetic variations — as opposed to habit, culture or other factors — underlie these differences has been hard to come by. Geneticist Richard Newcomb of the New Zealand institute for Plant and Food Research in Auckland and his colleagues searched for olfactory genes by testing 187 people’s sensitivity to ten chemicals found in everyday food, including the molecules that give distinctive smells to blue cheese, apples and violets. They found that, as expected, the smelling abilities of their subjects varied. The team then sequenced the subjects’ genomes and looked for differences that could predict people’s ability to detect each chemical through smell. For four of the ten chemicals, the researchers identified clusters of genes that convincingly predicted smelling ability, as they report today in Current Biology1. The study could not conclude whether similar genetic associations exist for the other six compounds, or whether factors other than genes play a role in those cases. Previously, only five regions of the genome had been shown to affect olfactory ability when they undergo mutations, so Newcomb’s study has nearly doubled the number of genetic associations known to influence smell. And because there is nothing special about the chemicals they studied, Newcomb says that it is logical to think the findings would extend to lots of scents, meaning that people experience the plethora of chemicals surrounding them in endlessly different ways. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18454 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By CARL ZIMMER “Monogamy is a problem,” said Dieter Lukas of the University of Cambridge in a telephone news conference this week. As Dr. Lukas explained to reporters, he and other biologists consider monogamy an evolutionary puzzle. In 9 percent of all mammal species, males and females will share a common territory for more than one breeding season, and in some cases bond for life. This is a problem — a scientific one — because male mammals could theoretically have more offspring by giving up on monogamy and mating with lots of females. In a new study, Dr. Lukas and his colleague Tim Clutton-Brock suggest that monogamy evolves when females spread out, making it hard for a male to travel around and fend off competing males. On the same day, Kit Opie of University College London and his colleagues published a similar study on primates, which are especially monogamous — males and females bond in over a quarter of primate species. The London scientists came to a different conclusion: that the threat of infanticide leads males to stick with only one female, protecting her from other males. Even with the scientific problem far from resolved, research like this inevitably turns us into narcissists. It’s all well and good to understand why the gray-handed night monkey became monogamous. But we want to know: What does this say about men and women? As with all things concerning the human heart, it’s complicated. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 18453 - Posted: 08.03.2013

An experimental treatment for alcohol dependence works better in individuals who possess specific combinations of genes that regulate the function and binding of serotonin, a brain chemical affected by the treatment, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. A report of the finding appears online in the American Journal of Psychiatry. “This study is another important step toward personalized treatments for alcohol dependence,” says Kenneth R. Warren, Ph.D., acting director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), which funded the study. “A personalized approach based on a person’s genetic makeup is increasingly being investigated for delivering optimum treatment to the ‘right’ patient.” Ondansetron is a medication currently used to treat nausea and vomiting, often following chemotherapy. It works by blocking serotonin-3 receptors, and has shown potential as a treatment for defined subpopulations with alcohol dependence. In previous studies, Professor Bankole Johnson, D.Sc., M.D., and his team at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, have shown that variations in genes that encode the serotonin transporter, a protein that regulates the concentration of serotonin between nerve cells, can significantly influence drinking intensity. They have also shown that the effectiveness of ondansetron therapy among people with alcohol dependence is influenced by variations of the serotonin transporter gene.

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18452 - Posted: 08.03.2013

by Michael Slezak Could the US government be losing support in the global war on drugs? A year after some Latin American countries officially discussed alternatives to prohibition, Uruguay has moved to allow the production, sale and distribution of cannabis. The new legislation, which has made it through one house of parliament in Uruguay, has been described by President José Mujica as a "cutting-edge experiment". If passed by the upper house, the laws will allow registered users to buy up to 40 grams a month from a pharmacist, grow up to six plants at home, or grow up to 99 plants as part of a "cannabis club" made up of between 15 and 45 members. Uruguay has seen increases in crime associated with illegal drugs, particularly cocaine. According to the US Department of State, the drug problem continues there despite "concerted and consistent government efforts to combat these trends", including increased arrests and drug seizures. Mujica says the legislation aims to bring an existing market into the "light of day" and stop it from "corrupting everything". "They are doing it for the same reason the US stopped alcohol prohibition [in the 1930s]," says David Nutt at Imperial College London. "To reduce organised crime and achieve tax revenue for the country." The move comes hot on the heels of two US states legalising the production and distribution of cannabis and New Zealand creating a legal market for new designer drugs. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 18451 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Michele Solis Attention training might trump language practice in treating dyslexia, and video games might provide just that, according to a recent study in Current Biology. Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy found that 10 kids with dyslexia who played an action-filled video game for nine 80-minute sessions increased their reading speed, without introducing mistakes. These reading gains lasted at least two months and outpaced gains measured in 10 children with dyslexia who played a nonaction version of the same game, as well as trumping the expected improvement that naturally occurs in a year for a child with dyslexia. Though small, the study bolsters evidence that dyslexia stems in part from problems in focusing attention onto letters and words in an orderly way. Last year the same team reported that preschoolers who struggled to quickly and accurately shift their attention—which can be thought of as a spotlight—were likely to have reading difficulties three years later. Because action video games require players to constantly redirect their attention to different targets, neuroscientist Simone Gori and his colleagues thought the video games might fine-tune that spotlight so as to avoid jumbling letters on a page. The training honed visual attention skills and reading hand in hand, and the reading improvements even exceeded those obtained in children after traditional therapies for dyslexia, which focus on building language skills. Gori does not advocate abandoning the older methods but says that training visual attention could be a vital, overlooked component. He also notes that kids are prone to quit traditional dyslexia therapies, which he says can be demanding and even boring; not a problem in his video-game experiment. “Our difficulty was in getting the kids to stop playing,” Gori says. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Dyslexia
Link ID: 18450 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR Well-established guidelines for the treatment of back pain require very conservative management — in most cases, no more than aspirin or acetaminophen (Tylenol) and physical therapy. Advanced imaging procedures, narcotics and referrals to other physicians are recommended only for the most refractory cases or those with serious other symptoms. But a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine suggests that doctors are not following the guidelines. Researchers studied 23,918 outpatient visits for back pain, a representative sample of an estimated 440 million visits made over 12 years in the United States. After controlling for age, sex, the nature of the pain and other factors, they found that during this time, Nsaid and Tylenol use fell more than 50 percent. But prescriptions for opiates increased by 51 percent, and CT or M.R.I. scans by 57 percent. Referrals to other physicians increased by 106 percent, which the authors said is a likely contributor to recent increases in expensive and often ineffective spine surgeries. The senior author, Dr. Bruce E. Landon, a professor of health care policy at Harvard, said that in most cases back pain improves by itself. But he added: “It’s a long conversation for physicians to educate patients. Often it’s easier just to order a test or give a narcotic rather than having a conversation. It’s not always easy to do the right thing.” Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 18449 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Meghan Rosen The career choices of one type of social spider depend on its personality. Character wins out over factors such as age or body size in shaping the spider’s job prospects, researchers report July 31 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Lena Grinsted of Aarhus University in Denmark and colleagues marked more than 600 Stegodyphus sarasinorum spiders with brightly colored paint to identify individuals. Then the team gave the spiders a personality quiz. Researchers measured spiders’ boldness by blasting them with a puff of air and aggression by prodding them with a stick. Bold spiders froze when they first felt the air but quickly recovered. Aggressive spiders struck a threatening pose after feeling the stick. Then the team let the spiders build nests for hiding and webs for capturing prey. When the researchers wiggled a leaf in the webs to mimic a struggling insect, the boldest spiders hustled out to investigate. The findings bolster the idea that spider colonies are not homogenous societies where everyone contributes in the same way, the authors suggest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Aggression
Link ID: 18448 - Posted: 08.03.2013

by Tanya Lewis, LiveScience In waters from Florida to the Caribbean, dolphins are showing up stranded or entangled in fishing gear with an unusual problem: They can't hear. More than half of stranded bottlenose dolphins are deaf, one study suggests. The causes of hearing loss in dolphins aren't always clear, but aging, shipping noise and side effects from antibiotics could play roles. "We're at a stage right now where we're determining the extent of hearing loss [in dolphins], and figuring out all the potential causes," said Judy St. Leger, director of pathology and research at SeaWorld in San Diego. "The better we understand that, the better we have a sense of what we should be doing [about it]." Whether the hearing loss is causing the dolphin strandings -- for instance, by steering the marine mammals in the wrong direction or preventing them from finding food -- is also still an open question. Dolphins are a highly social species. They use echolocation to orient themselves by bouncing high-pitched sound waves off of objects in their environment. They also "speak" to one another in a language of clicks and buzzing sounds. Because hearing is so fundamental to dolphins' survival, losing it can be detrimental. A 2010 study found that more than half of stranded bottlenose dolphins and more than a third of stranded rough-toothed dolphins had severe hearing loss. The animals' hearing impairment may have been a critical factor in their strandings, and all rescued cetaceans should be tested, the researchers said in the study, detailed in the journal PLOS ONE. © 2013 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Migration
Link ID: 18447 - Posted: 08.03.2013

Researchers have reverse-engineered the outlines of a disrupted prenatal gene network in schizophrenia, by tracing spontaneous mutations to where and when they likely cause damage in the brain. Some people with the brain disorder may suffer from impaired birth of new neurons, or neurogenesis, in the front of their brain during prenatal development, suggests the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health. “Processes critical for the brain’s development can be revealed by the mutations that disrupt them,” explained Mary-Claire King, Ph.D. External Web Site Policy, University of Washington (UW), Seattle, a grantee of NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). “Mutations can lead to loss of integrity of a whole pathway, not just of a single gene. Our results implicate networked genes underlying a pathway responsible for orchestrating neurogenesis in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia.” King, and collaborators at UW and seven other research centers participating in the NIMH genetics repository, report on their discovery Aug. 1, 2013 in the journal Cell. “By linking genomic findings to functional measures, this approach gives us additional insight into how early development differs in the brain of someone who will eventually manifest the symptoms of psychosis,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D. Earlier studies had linked spontaneous mutations to non-familial schizophrenia and traced them broadly to genes involved in brain development, but little was known about convergent effects on pathways.

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18446 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Meghan Rosen A short camping trip could help people rise and shine. After a week living in tents in Colorado’s Rockies, volunteers’ internal clocks shifted about two hours earlier, transforming night owls into early birds, researchers report August 1 in Current Biology. “It’s a clever study, and it makes a dramatic point,” says Katherine Sharkey, a sleep researcher and physician at Brown University. People get much more light outside than they do indoors, and that can reset their internal clocks, she says. A master clock in the brain controls the release of melatonin, a hormone that prepares the body for sleep. Melatonin levels rise in the early evening and then taper off in the morning before a person wakes up. But because so many people spend their days indoors and their nights bathed in the glow of electric lights, the body’s clock can get out of sync. Melatonin levels ramp up later in the evening and ebb later in the morning — often after a person has woken up. The lingering sleep hormone can make people groggy. Kenneth Wright Jr., a sleep researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, and colleagues whisked eight volunteers away from artificial lights for a summer camping trip. After nightfall, the campers used only campfires for illumination — no flashlights (or cellphones) allowed. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 18445 - Posted: 08.03.2013

By Lucas Laursen My cousin Guillermo Cassinello Toscano was on the train that derailed in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, last week when it went around a bend at twice the speed limit. Cassinello heard a loud vibration and then a powerful bump and then found himself surrounded by bloody bodies in wagon number nine. Shaking, he escaped the wreckage through either a door or a hole in the train—he cannot recall—then sat amid the smoke and debris next to the track and began to cry. Seventy-nine passengers died. Cassinello doesn’t remember everything that happened to him. The same mechanisms that kept his brain sharp enough to escape immediate danger may also make it harder for him both to recall the accident, and to put the trauma behind him. "The normal thing is that the person doesn't remember the moment of the accident or right after," says clinical psychologist Javier Rodriguez Escobar of trauma therapy team Grupo Isis in Seville, who helped treat and study victims of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. That's because the mind and the body enter a more alert but also more stressed state, with trade-offs that can save your life, but harm your mind’s memory-making abilities. As the train fell over, several changes would have swept through Cassinello’s body. His adrenal glands, near his kidneys, would have released adrenaline (also known as epinephrine) into his bloodstream. The adrenaline would have directed blood to the powerful muscles of his arms and legs, where it would help him escape the wreckage faster. The hormone would have raised his heart and breathing rates. It also would have stimulated his vagus nerve, which runs from his spine to his brain. Although adrenaline cannot cross the blood–brain barrier, the vagus can promote noradrenaline production in the brain. That hormone activates the amygdala, which helps form memories. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 18444 - Posted: 08.01.2013

By Jessica Shugart Lunch at a restaurant with a friend could lessen the brain’s aptitude for detailed tasks back at work, a new study suggests. If an error-free afternoon is the goal, perhaps workers should consider hastily consuming calories alone at their desks. But bosses shouldn’t rush to glue workers to their chairs just yet. The research is only a first stab at teasing out how a sociable lunch affects work performance, says study leader Werner Sommer of Humboldt University in Berlin. Researchers have long thought that dining with others fosters mental well-being, cooperation and creativity. To test the effects of a midday social hour on the brain’s capacity to get through the workday, Sommer and his colleagues gave 32 university students lunch in one of two settings and then tested their mental focus. Half of the students enjoyed meals over a leisurely hour with a friend at a casual Italian restaurant. The other group picked up their meals from the same restaurant, but had only 20 minutes to eat alone in a drab office. People who went out to lunch got to choose from a limited vegetarian menu; participants in the office group had meals that matched the choice of a member of the other group. After lunch, the group that dined in bland solitude performed better on a task that assesses rapid decision making and focus, the researchers report July 31 in PLOS ONE. Measurements of brain activity also suggested that the brain’s error-monitoring system could be running at sub-par levels in those who ate out. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 18443 - Posted: 08.01.2013

Andrew M. Seaman, Reuters Children with an autism spectrum disorder spend about twice as much time playing video games as kids who don't have a developmental disability, according to a new study. Researchers also found that children with an autism spectrum disorder or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at an increased risk of gaming addictions, compared to children without the disabilities. "What we found is that it looks like (addictive gaming) was largely driven by inattention," Christopher Engelhardt, one of the study's authors from the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Reuters Health. Previous studies have found that children with an autism spectrum disorder or ADHD spend more time playing video games and are at increased risk for gaming addictions than other children, write the researchers in the journal Pediatrics. No single study, however, has looked at the three groups to see whether shared features of autism and ADHD - such as inattention or hyperactivity - seem to drive video game use. For the new study, Engelhardt and his colleague surveyed the parents of 141 boys between the ages of 8 and 18 years old. Of those, 56 had an autism spectrum disorder, 44 had ADHD and 41 were developing normally. Overall, they found that kids with an autism spectrum disorder played - on average - 2.1 hours of video games per day. Children with ADHD spent about 1.7 hours per day playing video games and normally developing kids played about 1.2 hours per day.

Keyword: ADHD; Autism
Link ID: 18442 - Posted: 08.01.2013