UC Davis researchers create story-telling intervention that helps children with fragile X syndrome communicate. The intervention involves real-time parent coaching, all provided in the home through telecommunications.
To address the deficit of interventions for older children and adolescents with fragile X, MIND Institute researcher Andrea McDuffie and colleagues created an intervention that uses a shared storytelling paradigm and real-time parent coaching, all provided in the home through telecommunications. The small but important study found that the intervention improved adolescent boys鈥 abilities to produce longer sentences, use more diverse vocabulary and concentrate for longer time periods during conversational interactions.
A UC Davis researcher has created a video game for children who experience cognitive impairments from genetic disorders with the hope that that it will improve their ability to mentally process information about space and time.
Treatment with sertraline may provide nominal but important improvements in cognition and social participation in very young children with fragile X syndrome, the most common genetic cause of intellectual disability and the leading single-gene cause of autism, a study by researchers with the UC Davis MIND Institute has found.
Researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have found that a battery of tests appears to have strong potential for measuring cognitive changes over time for people with intellectual disabilities. The work could open new doors to research into whether drugs and specialized educational programs or treatments can improve function in people with Down syndrome, fragile X syndrome and other causes of intellectual disabilities.
For the first time, researchers have found higher levels of Gram-negative bacteria antigens in brain samples from late-onset Alzheimer鈥檚 disease patients. Compared to controls, patients with Alzheimer's had much higher levels of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and E coli K99 pili protein. In addition, The UC Davis team also found LPS molecules congregated with amyloid plaques, which have been linked to Alzheimer鈥檚 pathology and progression. The research was published today in the print edition of the journal Neurology.
In two recent studies, researchers at UC Davis have shown that placental tissue can provide critical information about the epigenetic landscape that influences fetal development.
Researchers from the UC Davis MIND Institute, University of North Carolina (UNC) and other institutions have found that altered distribution of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in high-risk infants can predict whether they will develop autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The study appears today in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
Researchers at UC Davis and other institutions have shown that mothers who take recommended amounts of folic acid around conception might reduce their children鈥檚 pesticide-related autism risk.
In a striking new finding, researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute found that typically-developing children gain more neurons in a region of the brain that governs social and emotional behavior, the amygdala, as they become adults. This phenomenon does not happen in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Instead, children with ASD have too many neurons early on and then appear to lose those neurons as they become adults. The findings were published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).