Abstract   Aim This study aimed to determine what is known from the existing literature about parental guidance during occupational therapy to promote the participation of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in everyday activities. Method  The scoping review methodology was used to gather existing information on the topic. The following databases were used for searches: The Allied and Complementary Medicine Database (AMED), Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and MEDLINE.  Results Ten studies were included in this study, as they met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The results of the selected studies were thematically organised. Three key elements emerged from the results that promoted the participation of children with ASD in everyday life activities: increased knowledge and awareness of parents; new practices and changes in everyday life; supporting and strengthening parenting.  Conclusion  The findings of this study suggest that parents have a central role to play in promoting child participation. Parental guidance is an ideal way to promote the participation of ASD children in everyday activities, as parents are involved in children’s daily lives and influence children’s natural environments. The results of this study can be utilized in occupational therapy practice for the implementation of interventions. Keywords: ASD, children with ASD, daily activities, involvement, occupational therapy, parental guidance

This diploma thesis is concerned with the subject of inaccessible social services for people suffering from autism spectrum disorders (hereinafter ASD) and associated challenging behavior. Emphasis is placed on the social care and services in terms of settings of the social system in the Czech Republic. The theoretical part of the thesis aims on bringing a comprehensive view of the current availability of social services for people with ASD and associated challenging behavior. Especially the definition of basic concepts along with introduction of individual actors throughout the system and a description of the current situation in the Czech Republic and in the world. The description of possible causes of the unavailability of social services for persons with ASD and associated challenging behavior is at the core of the empirical part. Data gathering and analysis are based on methods of Grounded theory. The semi-structured interviews with representatives of regions and with the social service providers are used as data sources. Conclusions of the thesis include, in particular, extreme cost and long-term staff shortages, weak legislative support, and fragmented network services planning at the county level. These are the roots of the social services unavailability. These should be resolved during the...

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology has been used in the investigation of human brain functionality and assist in brain disease diagnosis. While fMRI can be used to model both spatial and temporal brain functionality, the analysis of the fMRI images and the discovery of patterns for certain brain diseases is still a challenging task in medical imaging. Deep learning has been used more and more in medical field in an effort to further improve disease diagnosis due to its effectiveness in discovering high-level features in images. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is a class of deep learning algorithm that have been successfully used in medical imaging and extract spatial hierarchical features. The application of CNNs in fMRI and the extraction of brain functional patterns is an open field for research. This project focuses on how fMRIs can be used to improve Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) detection and diagnosis with 3D resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI) images. ASDs are a range of neurodevelopment brain diseases that mostly affect social function. Some of the symptoms include social and communicating difficulties, and also restricted  and repetitive  behaviors. The  symptoms appear on early childhood and tend to develop in time thus an early diagnosis is required. Finding a proper model for identifying between ASD and healthy subject is a challenging task and involves a lot of hyper-parameter tuning. In this project a grid search approach is followed in the quest of the optimal CNN architecture. Additionally, regularization and augmentation techniques are implemented in an effort to further improve the models performance.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves a broad presentation of symptoms classified along continuum of severity, with core deficits in Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours required for formal diagnosis (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Lauritsen, 2013). The development of particular cognitive, behavioural and interpersonal difficulties seen in ASD is of great interest. Temperament offers particular value given that it influences the development of social behaviours, emotionality and self-regulation (Shiner et al., 2012). The self-regulatory temperament factor, effortful control, is known to be diminished in ASD (Garon et al., 2009, 2016) and is theorised to be related to attention and executive functioning (Rothbart & Rueda, 2005). This link is of particular interest, given that attention and executive function deficits are prominent in ASD (Craig et al., 2016; Lai et al., 2017; Sanders, Johnson, Garavan, Gill, & Gallagher, 2008). To date, however, a thorough literature search failed to yield a study which has investigated whether effortful control,attention and executive functioning are concurrently associated with ASD symptomatology.Moreover, the relationship between effortful control, attention and executive functioning is not as unambiguous as previously theorised in typical development, with little investigation into these relationships in ASD. To elucidate the association effortful control, attention and executive functioning have with ASD symptomatology, the relationship between effortful control and these cognitive variable needs to be better established empirically. Therefore the current investigation’s aims were twofold. Study One investigated the relationship of effortful control with attention and executive functions in neurotypical and ASD samples. Study Two explored the association between effortful control, attention, executive functions and core ASD deficits (i.e. Social Affect and Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours). A sample of 38 ASD and 38 neurotypical boys (aggregate-matched on key demographic factors), aged 6 - 15, and their primary caregivers were recruited. Study One considered both groups (n=76) and featured both quasi-experimental and relational investigations. Study Two focused only on the ASD sample (n=38) and used a purely relational design. Neurocognitive measures were used to assess two attention domains (i.e. attention span and sustained attention), and three executive functions (i.e. working memory, inhibition and switching). Effortful control was measured using a parent-report questionnaire and ASD core deficits were examined using the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, Second edition (ADOS-2; Lord, Luyster, Gotham, & Guthrie, 2012). Results of Study One revealed effortful control was a significant predictor of attention span, working memory and inhibition, with ASD participants performing significantly more poorly on these cognitive domains and rated significantly more poorly on effortful control. Study Two’s results indicated that Social Affect was significantly correlated with inhibition and the interaction effect between effortful control and working memory. Furthermore, only effortful control, attention span and their interaction effect were significantly associated with Restricted Repetitive Behaviours. Specifically, effortful control was found to moderate this relationship. At high levels of effortful control, increased attention span was associated with less Restricted, Repetitive Behaviours. These findings may aid efforts to establish a predictive model for ASD core deficits on the basis of temperament and cognitive difficulties. Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Effortful Control, Attention, Executive Functions, Social Affect, Restricted Repetitive Behaviours

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Millions of students with disabilities in the United States have access to educational programming to assist and provide special education support services. In existence for mere decades, special education as it currently stands was founded on groundbreaking legislation and refining law in the form of the Individual with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The most recent revision of this law in 2004 significantly extended parents' rights to be decision-makers in the educational planning process for children with disabilities. A litany of research into parent experiences of the IEP and special education process reveals that parents consistently report feelings of being marginalized in the decision-making process. A systematic literature review conducted by the author revealed that parents and family members of children with ASD report broadly similar themes of dissatisfaction with the special education process and communicating with staff. The current research proposal seeks to investigate the interaction experiences with Licensed Specialist in School Psychology (LSSP) personnel of parents and family members of elementary-aged children with ASD. LSSPs, recognized as possessing expertise on autism spectrum disorder amongst special education evaluation personnel, often conduct evaluations for students with ASD.

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EPA and DHA are among the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids. Polyunsaturated fatty acids, including EPA and DHA, are fatty acids that are part of the diet and they are important structural molecules that include forming membrane membranes and. They are involved in the function of nerve cells and the brain. EPA and DHA are also necessary during early fetal development.  It can be difficult to get enough intake of EPA and DHA through diet alone. The daily recommendation for omega-3 fatty acids is 2.5-3 grams, but this amount is also include the omega-3 fatty acid, linolenic acid (ALA) which has a shorter carbon chain. It is an important component of our diet, as it is found in many common food plants but ALA does not provide the health benefits seen with EPA and DHA. The body can convert ALA from dietary sources to EPA and DHA via the enzymes enlongase and desaturase; however, enzyme capacity is low and research shows that only a small amount of DHA and EPA can be synthesized in the body. Therefore, dietary intake of EPA and DHA is important. In recent years, studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids have health-promoting properties. This study summarizes the structural properties and dietary sources of omega-3 fatty acids and their effect on hyperactivity symptoms in children with ASD. The PubMed database was used to search for studies. Four published RCT studies were evaluated. The participants in the four studies were children between 2.5 and 8 years old. The effect of an average dose of 1,075 g of omega-3 fatty acids per day and its effects were investigated. Although the results of the four studies showed that the daily intake of omega-3 fatty acids reduced hyperactivity symptoms in children with autism, the results were not statistically significant. The conclusion is that although a decrease in hyperactivity was observed in children with ASD who received omega-3 fatty acids as a dietary supplement, there was not a statistically significant reduction in hyperactivity symptoms. More studies are needed to confirm whether treatment with omega-3 fatty acids reduces hyperactivity in children with ASD.

The locus coeruleus (LC) projects ubiquitously to the cortex, and noradrenaline (NA) exerts powerful neuromodulatory control on cortical excitation and inhibition. Previous work has shown that NA plays an important role in motor processes, and further posits that dysregulation in NA function could be one of the culprits of motor-related deficits in many neurodevelopmental disorders, including Autism Spectrum Disorder. In order to characterize the change in NA levels during motor learning in awake and behaving mice, I employed a newly developed optical NA sensor, combined with in vivo two-photon imaging, to visualize spatiotemporal activation patterns of NA in the motor cortex. This experimental approach allows us to track and chronically image the same region of the motor cortex over multiple days, thus permitting the characterization of NA activity throughout the entirety of the motor learning process. I found that NA levels increase significantly during the initial phase of learning, which coincides with the structural and functional plastic changes that have been previously reported in the motor cortex during early stages of motor learning. The NA activity returns to baseline levels as the mice develop their movement strategy; however, the regions of NA release become more spatially clustered during the learning process. The results reported in this thesis provide a novel glimpse into the dynamics of NA activity in the motor cortex during motor learning, and it will provide new direction for the development of therapeutic strategies and diagnostic criteria for motor-related dysfunction in neurodevelopmental diseases.