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1. Prolonged Auditory Brainstem Response in Universal Hearing Screening of Newborns with Autism Spectrum Disorder

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2422  

   Miron, Oren; Delgado, Rafael E.; Delgado, Christine F.; Simpson, Elizabeth A.; Yu, Kun‐Hsing; Gutierrez, Anibal; Zeng, Guangyu; Gerstenberger, Jillian N.; Kohane, Isaac S. (November 2020, Autism Research)

   null (Ed.)

   Previous studies report prolonged auditory brainstem response (ABR) in children and adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Despite its promise as a biomarker, it is unclear whether healthy newborns who later develop ASD also show ABR abnormalities. In the current study, we extracted ABR data on 139,154 newborns from their Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, including 321 newborns who were later diagnosed with ASD. We found that the ASD newborns had significant prolongations of their ABR phase and V‐negative latency compared with the non‐ASD newborns. Newborns in the ASD group also exhibited greater variance in their latencies compared to previous studies in older ASD samples, likely due in part to the low intensity of the ABR stimulus. These findings suggest that newborns display neurophysiological variation associated with ASD at birth. Future studies with higher‐intensity stimulus ABRs may allow more accurate predictions of ASD risk, which could augment the universal ABR test that currently screens millions of newborns worldwide. 

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2. Automated measures of vocal interactions and engagement in inclusive preschool classrooms

   https://doi.org/10.1002/aur.2980  

   Fasano, Regina M.; Mitsven, Samantha G.; Custode, Stephanie A.; Sarker, Debasish; Bulotsky‐Shearer, Rebecca J.; Messinger, Daniel S.; Perry, Lynn K. (July 2023, Autism Research)

   Abstract Classroom engagement plays a crucial role in preschoolers' development, yet the correlates of engagement, especially among children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and developmental delays (DD), remains unknown. This study examines levels of engagement with classroom social partners and tasks among children in three groups ASD, DD, and typical development (TD). Here, we asked whether children's vocal interactions (vocalizations to and from peers and teachers) were associated with their classroom engagement with social partners (peers and teachers) and with tasks, and whether the association between classroom engagement and vocal interactions differed between children in the ASD group and their peers in the DD and TD groups. Automated measures of vocalizations and location quantified children's vocal interactions with peers and teachers over the course of the school year. Automated location and vocalization data were used to capture both (1) children's vocal output to specific peers and teachers, and (2) the vocal input they received from those peers and teachers. Participants were 72 3–5‐year‐olds (M_age = 48.6 months, SD = 7.0, 43% girls) and their teachers. Children in the ASD group displayed lower engagement with peers, teachers, and tasks than children in the TD group; they also showed lower engagement with peers than children in the DD group. Overall, children's own vocalizations were positively associated with engagement with social partners. Thus, although children in the ASD group tend to have lower engagement scores than children in the TD group, active participation in vocal interactions appears to support their classroom engagement with teachers and peers. 

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3. Sensing echoes: temporal misalignment in auditory brainstem responses as the earliest marker of neurodevelopmental derailment

   https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgac315  

   Torres, Elizabeth B.; Varkey, Hannah; Vero, Joe; London, Eric; Phan, Ha; Kittler, Phyllis; Gordon, Anne; Delgado, Rafael E.; Delgado, Christine F.; Simpson, Elizabeth A.; et al (February 2023, PNAS Nexus)

   Abstract Neurodevelopmental disorders are on the rise worldwide, with diagnoses that detect derailment from typical milestones by 3 to 4.5 years of age. By then, the circuitry in the brain has already reached some level of maturation that inevitably takes neurodevelopment through a different course. There is a critical need then to develop analytical methods that detect problems much earlier and identify targets for treatment. We integrate data from multiple sources, including neonatal auditory brainstem responses (ABR), clinical criteria detecting autism years later in those neonates, and similar ABR information for young infants and children who also received a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders, to produce the earliest known digital screening biomarker to flag neurodevelopmental derailment in neonates. This work also defines concrete targets for treatment and offers a new statistical approach to aid in guiding a personalized course of maturation in line with the highly nonlinear, accelerated neurodevelopmental rates of change in early infancy. 

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4. Classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener for preschool children with and without developmental language disorder

   https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcomdis.2022.106276  

   Pace, Amy; Curran, Maura; Van Horne, Amanda Owen; de Villiers, Jill; Iglesias, Aquiles; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Wilson, Mary S.; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy (November 2022, Journal of Communication Disorders)

   Abstract Introduction This research examined the classification accuracy of the Quick Interactive Language Screener (QUILS) for identifying preschool-aged children (3;0 to 6;9) with developmental language disorder (DLD). We present data from two independent samples that varied in prevalence and diagnostic reference standard. Methods Study 1 included a clinical sample of children (54 with DLD; 13 without) who completed the QUILS and a standardized assessment of expressive grammar (Syntax subtest from the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation–Norm Referenced; Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test–Preschool 2nd Edition; or Structured Photographic Expressive Language Test–3 rd Edition). Study 2 included a community sample of children (25 with DLD; 101 without) who completed the QUILS and the Auditory Comprehension subtest of the Preschool Language Scales–5th Edition (PLS-5; Zimmerman et al., 2011). Discriminant analyses were conducted to compare classification accuracy (i.e., sensitivity and specificity) using the normreferenced cut score (< 25th percentile) with empirically derived cut scores. Results In Study 1, the QUILS led to low fail rates (i.e., high specificity) in children without impairment and statistically significant group differences as a function of children's clinical status; however, only 65% of children with DLD were accurately identified using the norm-referenced cutoff. In Study 2, 76% of children with DLD were accurately identified at the 25th percentile cutoff and accuracy improved to 84% when an empirically derived cutoff (<32nd percentile) was applied. Conclusions Findings support the clinical application of the QUILS as a component of the screening process for identifying the presence or absence of DLD in community samples of preschool-aged children. 

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5. Naturalistic stimuli reveal a critical period in visual cortex development: Evidence from adult-onset blindness

   https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.09.14.460305  

   Musz, E.; Loitile, R.; Chen, J.; Cusack, R.; Bedny, M. (January 2021, bioRxiv)

   How do life experiences impact cortical function? In people who are born blind, the “visual” cortices are recruited for nonvisual tasks such as Braille reading and sound localization (e.g., Collignon et al., 2011; Sadato et al., 1996). The mechanisms of this recruitment are not known. Do visual cortices have a latent capacity to respond to nonvisual information that is equal throughout the lifespan? Alternatively, is there a sensitive period of heightened plasticity that makes visual cortex repurposing possible during childhood? To gain insight into these questions, we leveraged naturalistic auditory stimuli to quantify and compare cross-modal responses congenitally blind (CB, n=22), adult-onset blind (vision loss >18 years-of-age, AB, n=14) and sighted (n=22) individuals. Participants listened to auditory excerpts from movies; a spoken narrative; and matched meaningless auditory stimuli (i.e., shuffled sentences, backwards speech) during fMRI scanning. These rich naturalistic stimuli made it possible to simultaneous engage a broad range of cognitive domains. We correlated the voxel-wise timecourses of different participants within each group. For all groups, all stimulus conditions induced synchrony in auditory cortex and for all groups only the narrative stimuli synchronized responses in higher-cognitive fronto-parietal and temporal regions. Inter-subject synchrony in visual cortices was high in the CB group for the movie and narrative stimuli but not for meaningless auditory controls. In contrast, visual cortex synchrony was equally low among AB and sighted blindfolded participants. Even many years of blindness in adulthood fail to enable responses to naturalistic auditory information in visual cortices of people who had sight as children. These findings suggest that cross-modal responses in visual cortex of people born blind reflect the plasticity of developing visual cortex during a sensitive period. 

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