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Processing of social and monetary rewards in autism spectrum disorders
- Sarah Baumeister, Carolin Moessnang, Nico Bast, Sarah Hohmann, Pascal Aggensteiner, Anna Kaiser, Julian Tillmann, David Goyard, Tony Charman, Sara Ambrosino, Simon Baron-Cohen, Christian Beckmann, Sven Bölte, Thomas Bourgeron, Annika Rausch, Daisy Crawley, Flavio Dell'Acqua, Guillaume Dumas, Sarah Durston, Christine Ecker, Dorothea L. Floris, Vincent Frouin, Hannah Hayward, Rosemary Holt, Mark H. Johnson, Emily J. H. Jones, Meng-Chuan Lai, Michael V. Lombardo, Luke Mason, Bethany Oakley, Marianne Oldehinkel, Antonio M. Persico, Antonia San José Cáceres, Thomas Wolfers, Eva Loth, Declan G. M. Murphy, Jan K. Buitelaar, Heike Tost, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Tobias Banaschewski, Daniel Brandeis, the EU-AIMS LEAP Group
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- Journal:
- The British Journal of Psychiatry / Volume 222 / Issue 3 / March 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 26 January 2023, pp. 100-111
- Print publication:
- March 2023
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Background
Reward processing has been proposed to underpin the atypical social feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, previous neuroimaging studies have yielded inconsistent results regarding the specificity of atypicalities for social reward processing in ASD.
AimsUtilising a large sample, we aimed to assess reward processing in response to reward type (social, monetary) and reward phase (anticipation, delivery) in ASD.
MethodFunctional magnetic resonance imaging during social and monetary reward anticipation and delivery was performed in 212 individuals with ASD (7.6–30.6 years of age) and 181 typically developing participants (7.6–30.8 years of age).
ResultsAcross social and monetary reward anticipation, whole-brain analyses showed hypoactivation of the right ventral striatum in participants with ASD compared with typically developing participants. Further, region of interest analysis across both reward types yielded ASD-related hypoactivation in both the left and right ventral striatum. Across delivery of social and monetary reward, hyperactivation of the ventral striatum in individuals with ASD did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Dimensional analyses of autism and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) scores were not significant. In categorical analyses, post hoc comparisons showed that ASD effects were most pronounced in participants with ASD without co-occurring ADHD.
ConclusionsOur results do not support current theories linking atypical social interaction in ASD to specific alterations in social reward processing. Instead, they point towards a generalised hypoactivity of ventral striatum in ASD during anticipation of both social and monetary rewards. We suggest this indicates attenuated reward seeking in ASD independent of social content and that elevated ADHD symptoms may attenuate altered reward seeking in ASD.
Alexithymia in autism: cross-sectional and longitudinal associations with social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms
- Bethany F. M. Oakley, Emily J. H. Jones, Daisy Crawley, Tony Charman, Jan Buitelaar, Julian Tillmann, Declan G. Murphy, Eva Loth, The EU-AIMS LEAP Group
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- Journal:
- Psychological Medicine / Volume 52 / Issue 8 / June 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 08 October 2020, pp. 1458-1470
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Background
Alexithymia (difficulties in identifying and describing emotion) is a transdiagnostic trait implicated in social–emotional and mental health problems in the general population. Many autistic individuals experience significant social-communication difficulties and elevated anxiety/depression and alexithymia. Nevertheless, the role of alexithymia in explaining individual variability in the quality/severity of social-communication difficulties and/or anxiety and depression symptoms in autism remains poorly understood.
MethodsIn total, 337 adolescents and adults (autism N = 179) were assessed for alexithymia on the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and for social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms. A total of 135 individuals (autism N = 76) were followed up 12–24 months later. We used regression models to establish cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between alexithymia, social-communication difficulties, anxiety and depression symptoms.
ResultsAutistic individuals reported significantly higher alexithymia than comparison individuals (p < 0.001, r effect size = 0.48), with 47.3% of autistic females and 21.0% of autistic males meeting cut-off for clinically relevant alexithymia (score ⩾61). Difficulties in describing feelings were particularly associated with current self-reported social-communication difficulties [p < 0.001, β = 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.44–0.67] and predicted later social-communication difficulties (p = 0.02, β = 0.43, 95% CI 0.07–0.82). Difficulties in identifying feelings were particularly associated with current anxiety symptom severity (p < 0.001, β = 0.54, 95% CI 0.41–0.77) and predicted later anxiety (p = 0.01; β = 0.31, 95% CI 0.08–0.62).
ConclusionsOur findings suggest that difficulties in identifying v. describing emotion are associated with differential clinical outcomes in autism. Psychological therapies targeting emotional awareness may improve social-communication and anxiety symptoms in autism, potentially conferring long-term benefits.
List of contributors
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- By Nazia M. Alam, Enrico Alleva, Hiroyuki Arakawa, Robert H. Benno, Fred G. Biddle, D. Caroline Blanchard, Robert J. Blanchard, Richard J. Bodnar, John D. Boughter, Igor Branchi, Richard E. Brown, Abel Bult-Ito, Jonathan M. Cachat, Peter R. Canavello, Francesca Cirulli, Giovanni Colacicco, John C. Crabbe, Jacqueline N. Crawley, Wim E. Crusio, Sietse F. de Boer, Ekrem Dere, Brenda A. Eales, Robert T. Gerlai, Howard K. Gershenfeld, Thomas J. Gould, Martin E. Hahn, Peter C. Hart, Andrew Holmes, Joseph P. Huston, Allan V. Kalueff, Benjamin Kest, Robert Lalonde, Sarah R. Lewis-Levy, Hans-Peter Lipp, Sheree F. Logue, Stephen C. Maxson, Jeffrey S. Mogil, Douglas A. Monks, Dennis L. Murphy, Lee Niel, Timothy P. O’Leary, Susanna Pietropaolo, Peter K.D. Pilz, Claudia F. Plappert, Bernard Possidente, Glen T. Prusky, Laura Ricceri, Heather Schellinck, Herbert Schwegler, Burton Slotnick, Frans Sluyter, Shad B. Smith, Catherine Strazielle, Douglas Wahlsten, Hans Welzl, James F. Willott, David P. Wolfer, Armin Zlomuzica
- Edited by Wim E. Crusio, Université de Bordeaux, Frans Sluyter, Robert T. Gerlai, University of Toronto, Susanna Pietropaolo, Université de Bordeaux
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- Book:
- Behavioral Genetics of the Mouse
- Published online:
- 05 May 2013
- Print publication:
- 25 April 2013, pp ix-xii
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Contributors
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- By Graeme J.M. Alexander, Heung Bae Kim, Michael Burch, Andrew J. Butler, Tanveer Butt, Roy Calne, Edward Cantu, Robert B. Colvin, Paul Corris, Charles Crawley, Hiroshi Date, Francis L. Delmonico, Bimalangshu R. Dey, Kate Drummond, John Dunning, John D. Firth, John Forsythe, Simon M. Gabe, Robert S. Gaston, William Gelson, Paul Gibbs, Alex Gimson, Leo C. Ginns, Samuel Goldfarb, Ryoichi Goto, Walter K. Graham, Simon J.F. Harper, Koji Hashimoto, David G. Healy, Hassan N. Ibrahim, David Ip, Fadi G. Issa, Neville V. Jamieson, David P. Jenkins, Dixon B. Kaufman, Kiran K. Khush, Heung Bae Kim, Andrew A. Klein, John Klinck, Camille Nelson Kotton, Vineeta Kumar, Yael B. Kushner, D. Frank. P. Larkin, Clive J. Lewis, Yvonne H. Luo, Richard S. Luskin, Ernest I. Mandel, James F. Markmann, Lorna Marson, Arthur J. Matas, Mandeep R. Mehra, Stephen J. Middleton, Giorgina Mieli-Vergani, Charles Miller, Sharon Mulroy, Faruk Özalp, Can Ozturk, Jayan Parameshwar, J.S. Parmar, Hari K. Parthasarathy, Nick Pritchard, Cristiano Quintini, Axel O. Rahmel, Chris J. Rudge, Stephan V.B. Schueler, Maria Siemionow, Jacob Simmonds, Peter Slinger, Thomas R. Spitzer, Stuart C. Sweet, Nina E. Tolkoff-Rubin, Steven S.L. Tsui, Khashayar Vakili, R.V. Venkateswaran, Hector Vilca-Melendez, Vladimir Vinarsky, Kathryn J. Wood, Heidi Yeh, David W. Zaas, Jonathan G. Zaroff
- Edited by Andrew A. Klein, Clive J. Lewis, Joren C. Madsen
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- Book:
- Organ Transplantation
- Published online:
- 07 September 2011
- Print publication:
- 11 August 2011, pp vii-x
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Appendix 1 - The flora of St Kilda
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- By M. J. Crawley, Imperial College, London
- Edited by T. H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, J. M. Pemberton, University of Edinburgh
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- Soay Sheep
- Published online:
- 07 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 18 December 2003, pp 311-320
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Summary
The following systematic list of the vascular plants of St Kilda shows the grazing impacts of Soay sheep in different habitats. Nomenclature follows Stace (1997), and data are from M. J. Crawley (unpublished data) and Pankhurst and Mullin (1991).
The key to the habitats is as follows: I, sea cliffs and ungrazed places like inaccessible cleit-tops; II, freshwater wetlands and Iris mires; III, stream banks; IV, fertile grasslands within the Head Dyke; V, heaths and drier heathy grasslands; VI, mires and wet heathy grasslands; VII, Plantago sward and short seaside turf; VIII, walls, cleits and inland cliffs; IX, summit heaths and exposed places above 250 m, including the extensive Nardus–Racomitrium grasslands; X, The Village, the Army Base and in the vicinity of cleit doors.
The column headed ‘Dafor’ gives ranked abundance. The key is: d, dominant; a, abundant; f, frequent; o, occasional; r, rare; l, locally (prefix).
In the column headed ‘Seen’, plants are recorded on Hirta since 1993 by MJC unless noted by No (these are from published records in Pankhurst and Mullin (1991)). Those ruderals that might persist as dormant seeds in the soil seed bank are noted as? SB.
In the column headed ‘Grazing response’ the key is: I, increasers (unpalatable species that increase in abundance under moderate to heavy grazing by sheep); D, decreasers (highly palatable species that decline in abundance under grazing; many species exhibit reduced rates of flowering and seed production under grazing, but do not decline markedly in abundance).
3 - Population dynamics in Soay sheep
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- By T. H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, B. T. Grenfell, University of Cambridge, T. Coulson, University of Cambridge, A. D. C. MacColl, University of Sheffield, A. W. Illius, University of Edinburgh, M. C. Forchhammer, University of Copenhagen, K. Wilson, University of Stirling, J. Lindström, University of Glasgow, M. J. Crawley, Imperial College London, S. D. Albon, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Banchory: UK
- Edited by T. H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, J. M. Pemberton, University of Edinburgh
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- Soay Sheep
- Published online:
- 07 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 18 December 2003, pp 52-88
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Summary
Introduction
A conspicuous feature of many naturally limited populations of long-lived vertebrates is their relative stability. Both in populations that are regulated by predation or culling and in food-limited populations, population size can persist at approximately the same level for decades or even centuries (Runyoro et al. 1995; Waser et al. 1995; Clutton-Brock et al. 1997a; Newton 1998). The persistent fluctuations shown by Soay sheep and by some other island populations of ungulates (Boyd 1981; Leader-Williams 1988; Boussès 1991) raise general questions about the causes and consequences of variation in the stability of populations (see section 1.2). How regular are they? How are they related to population density? What are their immediate causes? To what extent do fluctuations in food availability, parasite number or predator density contribute to them? And what are their effects on development and on the phenotypic quality of animals born at contrasting population densities? And how much do changes in phenotype contribute to changes in dynamics?
As yet, there are very few cases where we understand either the ecological causes or the demographic consequences of persistent fluctuations in the size of naturally regulated populations of mammals (Hanski 1987; Saether 1997). Since we are able to monitor the growth, movements, breeding success and survival of large samples of individuals as population density changes, the Soay sheep offer an opportunity to investigate the causes and consequences of changes in population size with unusual precision (see Chapter 1).
4 - Vegetation and sheep population dynamics
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- By M. J. Crawley, Imperial College London, S. D. Albon, Centre Ecology and Hydrology, Banchory, UK, D. R. Bazely, York University, Canada, J. M. Milner, Scottish Agricultural College, Crianlarich, UK, J. G. Pilkington, University of Edinburgh, A. L. Tuke, Imperial College London
- Edited by T. H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, J. M. Pemberton, University of Edinburgh
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- Soay Sheep
- Published online:
- 07 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 18 December 2003, pp 89-112
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Summary
Introduction
The relationship between the sheep and their food supply is a key element in understanding the population dynamics of Soay sheep on Hirta. This island population of Soay sheep provides an ideal model system for the study of plant–herbivore dynamics: there are no vertebrate predators like foxes or buzzards, and no competitors like rabbits or voles. The vegetation is relatively unpolluted by atmospheric nutrient inputs, there are no confounding management operations, and the population is closed to immigration or emigration. Because the sheep population is evidently food-limited, we expect that grazing will have a major impact on the biomass, spatial structure and botanical composition of the vegetation. In this chapter, we describe the relationship between the sheep and their food supply, and discuss the consequences of sheep grazing for plant performance and longer-term vegetation dynamics. In a plant–herbivore interaction where there are no competing herbivores and no vertebrate predators, we expect that herbivore numbers will be determined by the food supply available to the sheep during winter (Crawley 1983). Our study follows a long tradition of monitoring the response of vegetation to changes in the numbers of vertebrate herbivores: e.g. relaxation of rabbit grazing on chalk grasslands following the myxoma epidemic (Thomas 1960), African elephants (Cumming 1981), ungulate guilds in Serengeti (McNaughton 1985), introduced reindeer on South Georgia (Leader-Williams et al. 1987; Leader-Williams 1998), livestock in the New Forest (Putman et al. 1989) desert rodents in the USA (Brown and Heske 1990), moose on Isle Royale (McLaren and Peterson 1994), sheep on heather moorland (Welch and Scott 1995), lemmings in arctic tundra (Virtanen et al. 1997), whitetailed deer in North American forests (Cornett et al. 2000), kangaroos in Australia (Newsome et al. 2001) red deer on Rum (Virtanen et al. 2002) and many more.
Appendix 3 - How average life tables can mislead
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- By T. Coulson, University of Cambridge, M. J. Crawley, Imperial College London
- Edited by T. H. Clutton-Brock, University of Cambridge, J. M. Pemberton, University of Edinburgh
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- Soay Sheep
- Published online:
- 07 December 2009
- Print publication:
- 18 December 2003, pp 328-331
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Summary
Life tables provide information on the mean survival and reproductive rates of animals of different ages and sex (Keyfitz 1968; Pollard 1973; Caughley 1977). These rates can be presented in many ways, but the key information in any life table is the proportion of animals that survive to age x(lx) and the number of recruits to the population that an animal of age x produces (mx). Life tables can easily be used to calculate the mean number of progeny per individual per generation (R0 = σlxmx), generation length (Tc = σlxmxx/R0) and the population growth rate (r = ln(R0)/Tc). When R0 = 1 each individual replaces itself and the population growth rate (r) is zero. When R0 < 1 individuals are failing to replace themselves, the population is declining and r < 0. Finally when R0 > 1 individuals are more than replacing themselves and the population increases in size (r > 0). Life tables now exist for a wide range of species and are much used in population and evolutionary ecology to construct models of population dynamics, to estimate whether a population is increasing or decreasing in size and to estimate the strength of selection (Caswell 1989, 2001; Brault and Caswell 1993). If a population biologist wanted to find out details about a species' population biology he would almost certainly look for an available life table before doing anything else.
The Iron Age Enclosures and Prehistoric Landscape of Sutton Common, South Yorkshire
- M. Parker Pearson, R.E. Sydes, S. Boardman, B. Brayshay, P.C. Buckland, A. Chadwick, M. Charles, G. Crawley, C. Cumberpatch, M. Dearne, J.A. Edmond, D. Hale, J. Henderson, M. Lomas, C. Merrony, J. Moore, A. Myers, T. Roper, J.-L. Schwenninger, M. Taylor, N. Whitehouse, M.L. Wright
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- Journal:
- Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society / Volume 63 / 1997
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 18 February 2014, pp. 221-259
- Print publication:
- 1997
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The Early Iron Age enclosures and associated sites on Sutton Common on the western edge of the Humberhead Levels contain an exceptional variety of archaeological data of importance not only to the region but for the study of later prehistory in the British Isles. Few other later prehistoric British sites outside the East Anglian fens and the Somerset Levels have thus far produced the quantity and quality of organically preserved archaeological materials that have been found, despite the small scale of the investigations to date. The excavations have provided an opportunity to integrate a variety of environmental analyses, of wood, pollen, beetles, waterlogged and carbonised plant remains, and of soil micromorphology, to address archaeological questions about the character, use, and environment of this Early Iron Age marsh fort. The site is comprised of a timber palisaded enclosure and a succeeding multivallate enclosure linked to a smaller enclosure by a timber alignment across a palaeochannel, with associated finds ranging in date from the Middle Bronze Age to the Roman and medieval periods. Among the four adjacent archaeological sites is an Early Mesolithic occupation site, also with organic preservation, and there is a Late Neolithic site beneath the large enclosure. Desiccation throughout the common is leading to the damage and loss of wooden and organic remains. It is hoped that the publication of these results, of investigations between 1987 and 1993, will lead to a fuller investigation taking place.