Infants of depressed mothers exhibit atypical frontal electrical brain activity during interactions with mother and with a familiar, nondepressed adult.

Previous studies have shown that infants of depressed mothers exhibit atypical frontal brain electrical activity when they are interacting with their mothers. Whereas typically developing infants exhibit greater left versus right frontal brain activity, infants of depressed mothers have been found to exhibit reduced relative left frontal activity. The left frontal brain region has been associated with the expression of positive emotions. In the present study, the question of whether the atypical pattern of brain activity found in infants of depressed mothers generalizes to situations not involving mother was addressed. Brain electrical activity was recorded from 13- to 15-month-old infants of depressed (N = 59) versus nondepressed (N = 40) mothers during a baseline condition, and during several social conditions that included a playful social interaction with a familiar experiments. Infants of depressed mothers exhibited reduced left relative to right frontal activity during the baseline condition, and during interactions with their mothers and with the familiar experimenter. The present results suggest that the atypical pattern of electrical brain activity found in infants of depressed mothers generalizes to a variety of situations, including positive interactions with nondepressed adults.

Neuropsychological correlates of early symptoms of autism.

Both the medial temporal lobe and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex have been implicated in autism. In the present study, performance on two neuropsychological tasks--one tapping the medial temporal lobe and related limbic structures, and another tapping the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex--was examined in relation to performance on tasks assessing autistic symptoms in young children with autism, and developmentally matched groups of children with Down syndrome or typical development. Autistic symptoms included orienting to social stimuli, immediate and deferred motor imitation, shared attention, responses to emotional stimuli, and symbolic play. Compared with children with Down syndrome and typically developing children, children with autism performed significantly worse on both the medial temporal lobe and dorsolateral prefrontal tasks, and on tasks assessing symptoms domains. For children with autism, the severity of autistic symptoms was strongly and consistently correlated with performance on the medial temporal lobe task, but not the dorsolateral prefrontal task. The hypothesis that autism is related to dysfunction of the medial temporal lobe and related limbic structures, such as the orbital prefrontal cortex, is discussed.

Children with autism fail to orient to naturally occurring social stimuli.

Children with autism were compared to developmentally matched children with Down syndrome or typical development in terms of their ability to visually orient to two social stimuli (name called, hands clapping) and two nonsocial stimuli (rattle, musical jack-in-the-box), and in terms of their ability to share attention (following another's gaze or point). It was found that, compared to children with Down syndrome or typical development, children with autism more frequently failed to orient to all stimuli, and that this failure was much more extreme for social stimuli. Children with autism who oriented to social stimuli took longer to do so compared to the other two groups of children. Children with autism also exhibited impairments in shared attention. Moreover, for both children with autism and Down syndrome, correlational analyses revealed a relation between shared attention performance and the ability to orient to social stimuli, but no relation between shared attention performance and the ability to orient to nonsocial stimuli. Results suggest that social orienting impairments may contribute to difficulties in shared attention found in autism.

Infants of depressed mothers exhibit atypical frontal brain activity: a replication and extension of previous findings.

The left frontal brain region is specialized for expression of positive emotions (e.g. joy) whereas the right frontal region is specialized for negative emotions (e.g. sadness). Depressed adults have been found to exhibit reduced left frontal electroencephalographic activity. In this study, baseline frontal and parietal EEG activity was measured in 13-15-month-old infants of depressed and nondepressed mothers who were of middle income with no other major psychiatric problems. Compared to infants of nondepressed mothers, infants of depressed mothers exhibited reduced left frontal EEG activity. Infants of mothers with major depression exhibited lower levels of left frontal EEG activity than those of mothers with subthreshold depression.

Early recognition of children with autism: a study of first birthday home videotapes.

Coded home videotapes of 11 autistic and 11 normally developing children's first year birthday parties for social, affective, joint attention, and communicative behaviors and for specific autistic symptoms. Autistic children displayed significantly fewer social and joint attention behaviors and significantly more autistic symptoms. In combination, four behaviors correctly classified 10 of 11 autistic children and 10 of 11 normal children. These behaviors consisted of pointing, showing objects, looking at others, and orienting to name.