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"There are a lot of systems designed to identify sarcasm, but this is the first that is able to interpret sarcasm in written text," said Peled. "We hope in the future, it will help people with autism and Asperger's, who have difficulty interpreting sarcasm, irony and humor." Based on machine translation, the new system turns sarcasti c sentences into honest (non-sarcastic) ones. It will, for example, turn a sarcastic sentence such as, "The new 'Fast and Furious' movie is awesome. #sarcasm" into the honest sentence, "The new Fast and Furious movie is terrible." Despite the vast development in this field, and the successes of sentiment analysis applications on "social media intelligence," existing applications do not know how to interpret sarcasm, where the writer writes the opposite of what (s)he actually means. In order to teach the system to produce accurate interpretations, the researchers compiled a database of 3...

Researchers tested 535 children and adults with Tourette's for autism, using a self-reporting test called the Social Responsiveness Scale. Among the 294 children tested , 22.8 percent reached the cutoff for autism, versus 8.7 percent of the 241 adults. In contrast, autism is estimated to affect between 0.3 and 2.9 percent of the general population, according to studies cited in the paper. The Social Responsiveness Scale Second Edition is a 65-item quantitative measure of autism symptoms that assesses the ability to engage in "emotionally appropriate reciprocal social interactions." It evaluates levels of social awareness, social cognition, social communication, social motivation, and restrictive interests and repetitive behavior. Its threshold for autism compares favorably with the diagnostic gold standard, the Autism Diagnostic Interview, the researchers noted. The study is publishing on June 22, 2017, in the  Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescen...

"Autism, like most human diseases, is complex," said Scott B . Selleck, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Penn State and one of the leaders of the research team. "There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of genes involved and up until now -- with very few exceptions -- these have been studied independently of the environmental contributors to autism, which are real. Our team of researchers represents a merger of people with genetic expertise and environmental epidemiologists, allowing us for the first time to answer questions about how genetic and environmental risk factors for autism interact." The team looked at copy-number variation -- deletions and duplications of repeated elements in the genome that lead to variation among individuals in the number of repeated elements -- as a general measure of genetic variation and five types of air pollution -- traffic-related air pollution, nitrogen oxides, two sizes of particulate matter, and ozo...

Taking advantage of advances in genetic technologies, researchers led by Alex Nord, assistant professor of neurobiology, physiology and behavior with the Center for Neuroscience at the University of California, Davis, are gaining a better understanding of the role played by a specific gene involved in autism. The collaborative work appears June 26 in the journal  Nature Neuroscience . "For years, the targets of drug discovery and treatment have been based on an unknown black box of what's happening in the brain," said Nord. "Now, using genetic approaches to study the impact of specific mutations found in cases, we're trying to build a cohesive model that links genetic control of brain development with behavior and brain function." The Nord laboratory studies how the genome encodes brain development and function, with a particular interest in understanding the genetic basis of neurological disorders. Mouse brain models There is no known specific g...

A new study from the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute demonstrates in songbirds the necessity of this neural circuit to learn vocalizations at a young age, a finding that expands the scientific understanding of some contributing factors in speech disorders in humans. "Speech and language learning depend on our ability to evaluate how accurately we are producing the particular sounds associated with speech," said Dr. Todd Roberts, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience with the O'Donnell Brain Institute at UT Southwestern Medical Center. "This evaluation has long been thought to rely on close interactions between auditory and speech-related motor areas of the brain, but identification of specific brain pathways involved in this process has been challenging." Researchers in Dr. Roberts ' songbird lab used zebra finches to study how brain circuits learn and control song. They found a network of neurons in the brain's motor cortex that sends a cop...

In an article published this month in the journal  Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders , Priscila Caçola, an assistant professor of kinesiology; UTA librarian Peace Ossom Williamson and Haylie Miller, an assistant professor in the Department of Physical Therapy at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, recommend that individuals with autism be evaluated thoroughly for the possibility of DCD. DCD, a neurodevelopmental condition, affects between 2 and 7 percent of school-age children. It is considered one of the major problems afflicting school-age children around the world. Symptoms include poor balance and coordination and underdeveloped handwriting skills. They struggle with basic childhood activities such as riding bicycles. Children with DCD tend to have limited or no athletic ability, are more sedentary and therefore more prone to obesity. They also are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem. Many children with autism spectrum disorder have traits comm...

The research found that the levels of two proteins previously identified as potential markers for ASD could help scientists accurately diagnose the disorder in approximately 75 percent of the children studied. When the two proteins are measured together, the diagnostic accuracy increased to 82 percent. The study published in the  Journal of Neuroinflammation  is among several recent and ongoing efforts to improve early diagnosis of ASD by shifting focus to biological measurements instead of behavioral symptoms. Progress in this area could lead to earlier intervention and help limit the effects of the disorder, said Dr. Dwight German, study senior author and Professor of Psychiatry at UT Southwestern. "ASD is a very heterogeneous disorder, and if we can identify biomarkers for even a subgroup of ASD patients, then that would be extremely helpful not only for early diagnosis but also for the development of therapeutics," said Dr. German, whose latest research builds u...

Girls born with a mutation in the  MECP2  gene initially develop typically , but at 6-18 months a gradual or sudden reversal of development indicates the onset of Rett syndrome. As this rare genetic neurological disease develops, affected girls experience slowed growth, a loss of communication skills and use of the hands, problems with movement and coordination, difficulty breathing, and seizures. The disease almost exclusively presents in girls, as the MECP2 gene is located on the X chromosome. With only a single copy of this chromosome, boys are affected in devastating ways by the mutation and rarely survive early infancy. The  MECP2  gene encodes methyl-CpG-binding protein-2 ( MeCP2), a transcriptional regulator of many genes including brain-derived neurotrophic factor ( BDNF ). Decreased levels of BDNF are associated with a number of neurological disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease and Huntington's disease. BDNF levels have also ...

The researchers, based in The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine , Baltimore, focused on the hippocampus, a brain region that is critical for learning and memory. The hippocampus contains a large number of neurons that develop in the early postnatal period, and which might thus vulnerable be to perturbation by anesthetic exposure. 15 day-old mice were exposed to clinically relevant doses of isoflurane and the effects on the subsequent development of the hippocampus were recorded. The structures of one class of neurons (the dentate gyrus granule cells) were found to be substantially altered. Specifically, the branches or dendrites of the neurons were almost twice the length of those in untreated animals, suggesting that the anesthetic caused an abnormal acceleration in their growth. In addition they saw a significant reduction in the number of mature dendritic spines -- structures on the dendrites where synapses are found. To see whether these changes were associated wit...

In a recent issue of  Neuron , published on June 21, 2017, a research team led by Professor Ho Min Kim at the Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering of KAIST reported the three-dimensional structure of MDGA1/Neuroligin-2 complex and mechanistic insights into how MDGAs negatively modulate synapse development governed by Neurexins/Neuroligins trans -synaptic adhesion complex. MDGA1 consists of six Ig-like domains, fibronectin type III repeat domain, and MAM domain . The crystal structure of MDGA1/Neuroligin-2 complex reveals that they form the 2:2 hetero-tetrameric complex and only the Ig1-Ig2 domains of MDGA1 are involved in interactions with Neuroligin-2. The structural comparison between the MDGA1/Neuroligin-2 and Neurexin-1β/Neuroligin-1 complexes intriguingly indicates that the Neuroligin-2 region binding to MDGA1 largely overlaps with that of Neurexin-1β, but the interaction interface of the MDGA1/Neuroligin-2 complex is much larger than that of the Neurexin-1β...