Aberrant Structural and Functional Developmental Trajectories in Children With Intellectual Disability

The immediate effect of listening to music on postural balance and mobility in individuals with intellectual disability

BACKGROUND

Individuals with intellectual disability have deficits in postural balance and mobility. This study aimed to explore the effect of listening to music on postural balance and mobility in individuals with intellectual disability.

METHOD

Ten participants with intellectual disability and 10 participants with typical development performed postural balance and mobility tests [Time Up and Go (TUGT)/Ten Metre Walking (TMWT)] in three music conditions: no music, preferred music, and Mozart's Jupiter music.

RESULTS

Results revealed that listening to Mozart's Jupiter decreased (p < 0.001) the center of pressure mean velocity values for both groups. In individuals with intellectual disability, the TUGT and the TMWT time to execution increased (p < 0.001) in the preferred music compared to the no music condition whereas the Mozart music has no significant effect (p ≥ 0.05).

CONCLUSION

Listening to Mozart's Jupiter enhanced static postural balance, whereas listening to the preferred music impaired mobility in individuals with intellectual disability.

Tablet computer-based cognitive training for visuomotor integration in children with developmental delay: a pilot study

BACKGROUND

Impaired visuomotor integration (VMI) is commonly observed in children with developmental delay (DD). This pilot study aimed to evaluate the effects of tablet computer-based cognitive training on the VMI in children with DD.

METHODS

This study included children aged 4 to under 18 years diagnosed with DD. The children participated in a 12-week tablet computer-based visual-spatial and visuomotor training program. They were administered the Mind Rx Kids Program (Brain Academy, Seoul, South Korea). The participants underwent daily 30-min tablet computer-based training for 12 weeks. The primary visuomotor function was measured using the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Test of Visual-Motor Integration, 6th Edition (VMI-6). For secondary outcomes, measurements were taken before and after 12-week treatment using the Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test (QUEST), Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM), Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS), Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder Rating Scale (ARS), and Child Smartphone Addiction Observer Scale. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the pre- and post-treatment outcomes.

RESULTS

Ten children with DD participated in this study. The results of the 12-week tablet computer-based cognitive training showed significant improvements in the raw score, standard score, percentile score, and equivalent age of the Beery VMI-6. Additionally, there were significant improvements in QUEST and WeeFIM scores. Although there were improvements in the CARS, ARS, and smartphone addiction observer scale, these were not statistically significant.

CONCLUSION

This pilot study confirmed that applying tablet computer-based cognitive training to children with DD not only improves VMI, but also enhances fine motor skills and activities of daily living. Furthermore, the results of this study indicate that tablet computer-based cognitive training does not increase digital media addiction. Therefore, children with DD can engage in tablet computer-based cognitive training at home without concerns about digital media addiction.

Mapping individual structural covariance network in development brain with dynamic time warping

A conspicuous property of brain development or maturity is coupled with coordinated or synchronized brain structural co-variation. However, there is still a lack of effective approach to map individual structural covariance network. Here, we developed a novel individual structural covariance network method using dynamic time warping algorithm and applied it to delineate developmental trajectories of topological organizations of structural covariance network from childhood to early adulthood with a large sample of 655 individuals from Human Connectome Project-Development dataset. We found that the individual structural covariance network exhibited small-worldness property and the network global topological characteristics including small-worldness, global efficiency, local efficiency, and modularity linearly increase with age while the shortest path length linearly decreases with age. The nodal topological properties including betweenness and degree increased with age in language and emotion regulation related brain areas, while it decreased with age mainly in visual cortex, sensorimotor area, and hippocampus. Moreover, the topological attributes of structural covariance network as features could predict the age of each individual. Taken together, our results demonstrate that dynamic time warping can effectively map individual structural covariance network to uncover the developmental trajectories of network topology, which may facilitate future investigations to establish the links of structural co-variations with respect to cognition and disease vulnerability.

Default mode and fronto-parietal network associations with IQ development across childhood in autism

Background

Intellectual disability affects approximately one third of individuals with autism spectrum disorder (autism). Yet, a major unresolved neurobiological question is what differentiates autistic individuals with and without intellectual disability. Intelligence quotients (IQs) are highly variable during childhood. We previously identified three subgroups of autistic children with different trajectories of intellectual development from early (2–3½ years) to middle childhood (9–12 years): (a) persistently high: individuals whose IQs remained in the normal range; (b) persistently low: individuals whose IQs remained in the range of intellectual disability (IQ < 70); and (c) changers: individuals whose IQs began in the range of intellectual disability but increased to the normal IQ range. The frontoparietal (FPN) and default mode (DMN) networks have established links to intellectual functioning. Here, we tested whether brain regions within the FPN and DMN differed volumetrically between these IQ trajectory groups in early childhood.

Methods

We conducted multivariate distance matrix regression to examine the brain regions within the FPN (11 regions x 2 hemispheres) and the DMN (12 regions x 2 hemispheres) in 48 persistently high (18 female), 108 persistently low (32 female), and 109 changers (39 female) using structural MRI acquired at baseline. FPN and DMN regions were defined using networks identified in Smith et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106:13040–5, 2009). IQ trajectory groups were defined by IQ measurements from up to three time points spanning early to middle childhood (mean age time 1: 3.2 years; time 2: 5.4 years; time 3: 11.3 years).

Results

The changers group exhibited volumetric differences in the DMN compared to both the persistently low and persistently high groups at time 1. However, the persistently high group did not differ from the persistently low group, suggesting that DMN structure may be an early predictor for change in IQ trajectory. In contrast, the persistently high group exhibited differences in the FPN compared to both the persistently low and changers groups, suggesting differences related more to concurrent IQ and the absence of intellectual disability.

Conclusions

Within autism, volumetric differences of brain regions within the DMN in early childhood may differentiate individuals with persistently low IQ from those with low IQ that improves through childhood. Structural differences in brain networks between these three IQ-based subgroups highlight distinct neural underpinnings of these autism sub-phenotypes.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s11689-022-09460-y.