The autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a complex group of neuropsychiatric conditions involving language, social communication, and mental flexibility. Here, we attempt to place recent genetic advances within a developmental and anatomical context. Recent progress in identifying ASD candidate genes supports involvement of multiple brain regions, including the frontal lobes, anterior temporal ...

Participation tends to decrease concomitantly with increasing age: the major difficulty that elderly people have in learning is due to a deterioration of brain function, causing a progressive weakening of concentration, memory and mental flexibility. Today, advanced researches in neuroscience show that brain ageing may be reversible: the brain is plastic in all stages of life, and its maps can ...

A neural net system called "Conposi t " is described. Conposit performs rule-based manipulation of very short term, complex symbolic data structures. This paper concentrates on a simulated version of Conposit that embodies core aspects of JohnsonLaird's mental model theory of syllogistic reasoning. This Conposit version is not intended to be a psychological theory, but rather to act as a test a...

In this paper we present and justify the design and implementation choices we have made in order to build our dialogue system MultiDial2. We propose an eventbased representation that enables us to structure the dialogue data upon several levels but within a single representation space. We show how this provides us with the necessary flexibility for a proper management of the dialogue. We descri...

Materials and methods Participants were 48 BD, 21 BDMD and 70 controls. All participants underwent assessment of Full Scale IQ (WAIS-R), working memory (N-back), initiation and inhibition (HSCT), cognitive set shifting and mental flexibility (WCST), memory (WMS-III), decision making and judgement (IGT), sustained attention (CPT) and interference (SCWT). Confirmation of diagnosis was made using ...

OBJECTIVES To (1) gain an understanding of current trajectories of Aboriginal young people through the mental health care system in Australia; (2) summarize what mental health care pathways have been developed or evaluated to guide mental health care delivery for Aboriginal young people; and (3) identify barriers and facilitators to the adoption of effective mental health care pathways for Abor...

curve flexibility in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (ais) was one of the major concerns of spinal surgeons since the evolution of surgical correction techniques. in this respect, many tried to identify which criteria denote more rigid curve. in the present study, we aimed toward determining important factors influencing ais curve flexibility on supine bending films. we assessed radiographs of ...

How does culture shape our concepts? Across many cultures, people conceptualize time as if it flows along a horizontal timeline, but the direction of this implicit timeline is culture specific: Later times are on the right in some cultures but on the left in others. Here we investigated whether experience reading can determine the direction and orientation of the mental timeline, independent of...

Stress-induced activation of the locus ceruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system produces significant cognitive and behavioral effects, including enhanced arousal and attention. Improvements in discrimination task performance and memory have been attributed to this stress response. In contrast, for other cognitive functions that require cognitive flexibility, increased activity of the LC-NE system...