In order to grasp the difference between "the cat on the mat" and "the mat on the cat," understanding the words and the grammar is not enough. Rather it is essential to visually synthesize the cat and the mat together in front of the mind's eye to appreciate their relations.This type of voluntary imagination, which involves juxtaposition of mental objects is conducted by the prefrontal cortex and is therefore called Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS). While PFS is essential for understanding of complex language, its acquisition has a strong experience-dependent critical period putting children with language delay in danger of never acquiring PFS and, consequently, not mastering complex language comprehension. In typical children, the timeline of PFS acquisition correlates with vocabulary expansion. Conversely, atypically developing children may learn hundreds of words but never acquire PFS. In these individuals, common tests of intelligence based on vocabulary assessment may miss the profound deficit in PFS. Accordingly, we developed a 5-minute test specific for PFS -Linguistic Evaluation of Prefrontal Synthesis or LEPSand administered it to 50 neurotypical children, age 2 to 7 years (4.1±1.3) and to 23 individuals with impairments, age 8-21 years (16.4±3.0). All neurotypical children older than 4 years received the LEPS score 7/10 or greater indicating good PFS ability. Among individuals with impairments only 9 of 23 (39%) received the LEPS score 7/10 or greater. LEPS score was 90% correct in predicting high-functioning vs. low-functioning class assignment in individuals with autism, while full-scale IQ score was only 50% correct.

In order to grasp the difference between "the cat on the mat" and "the mat on the cat," understanding the words and the grammar is not enough. Rather it is essential to visually synthesize the cat and the mat together in front of the mind's eye to appreciate their relations. This type of voluntary imagination, which involves juxtaposition of mental objects is conducted by the prefrontal cortex and is therefore called Prefrontal Synthesis (PFS). While PFS is essential for understanding of complex language, its acquisition has a strong experience-dependent critical period putting children with language delay in danger of never acquiring PFS and, consequently, not mastering complex language comprehension. In typical children, the timeline of PFS acquisition correlates with vocabulary expansion. Conversely, atypically developing children may learn hundreds of words but never acquire PFS. In these individuals, common tests of intelligence based on vocabulary assessment may miss the profound deficit in PFS. Accordingly, we developed a 5-minute test specific for PFS -Linguistic Evaluation of Prefrontal Synthesis or LEPSand administered it to 50 neurotypical children, age 2 to 7 years (4.1±1.3) and to 23 individuals with impairments, age 8-21 years (16.4±3.0). All neurotypical children older than 4 years received the LEPS score 7/10 or greater indicating good PFS ability. Among individuals with impairments only 9 of 23 (39%) received the LEPS score 7/10 or greater. LEPS score was 90% correct in predicting high-functioning vs. low-functioning class assignment in individuals with autism, while full-scale IQ score was only 50% correct..

No abstract

Neuropsychiatric disorders are highly prevalent conditions with significant individual, societal, and economic impacts. A major challenge in the diagnosis and treatment of these conditions is the lack of sensitive, reliable, objective, quantitative tools to inform diagnosis, and measure symptom severity. Currently available assays rely on self-reports and clinician observations, leading to subjective analysis. As a step toward creating quantitative assays of neuropsychiatric symptoms, we propose an immersive environment to track behaviors relevant to neuropsychiatric symptomatology and to systematically study the effect of environmental contexts on certain behaviors. Moreover, the overarching theme leads to connected tele-psychiatry which can provide effective assessment.

Oxytocin (OT), a mammalian neurohormone associated with social cognition and behavior, can be administered in its synthetic form intranasally (IN) and impact brain chemistry and behavior. IN-OT shows potential as a noninvasive intervention for disorders characterized by social challenges, e.g., autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and anorexia nervosa (AN). To evaluate IN-OT’s efficacy, we must quantify OT uptake, availability, and clearance; thus, we assessed OT levels in urine (uOT) before and after participants (26 ASD, 7 AN, and 7 healthy controls) received 40 IU IN-OT or placebo across two sessions using double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover designs. We also measured uOT and plasma (pOT) levels in a subset of participants to compare the two sampling methods. We found significantly higher uOT and pOT following intranasal delivery of active compound versus placebo, but analyses yielded larger effect sizes and more clearly differentiated pre–post-OT levels for uOT than pOT. Further, we applied a two-step cluster (TSC), blinded backward-chaining approach to determine whether active/placebo groups could be identified by uOT and pOT change alone; uOT levels may serve as an accessible and accurate systemic biomarker for OT dose–response. Future studies will explore whether uOT levels correlate directly with behavioral targets to improve dosing for therapeutic goals.