shared attention

An archive of neuroscience and development research potentially relevant to the practice of Floortime, Occupational Therapy, and Parenting. Please note that the opinions or concepts contained within do not necessarily reflect my own views, nor do they represent any kind of implicit endorsement. I merely wish to direct your attention towards items of potential mutual interest. contact me at: sharedattention(at)gmail(dot)com

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"The research showed that the human brain of individuals without ASD indicated very quickly when a tactile sensation does not correspond to the own sense of touch. This means that the human brain is able to signal that a tactile sensation of a finger that touches a surface does not correspond to own touch. This process occured otherwise in the brain of adults with ASD however. Their brain signaled to a much lesser extent when the external touch sensation did not correspond to their own touch. Those individuals that experienced stronger sensory difficulties showed a stronger disturbance of the neural process, while they were also the ones that experienced more severe social difficulties."

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First direct evidence for ultra-fast responses in human amygdala to fear

For the first time, an international team of scientists lead by researchers from the Campus de Excelencia Internacional Moncloa (UCM-UPM) has shown that the amygdala in the human brain is able to detect possible threats in the visual environment a

"Our work highlights the importance of ultra-rapid brain responses to threat-related visual stimuli. The responses in the amygdala are so fast that they could reflect an automatic or unconscious visual process, which might explain why fear can sometimes feel out of our voluntary control", according to Dr. Bryan Strange, from the Laboratory for Clinical Neuroscience of the UPM, which led the research with participation from the Basic Psychology I department of the UCM, in collaboration with the University of London (UK), the University of Geneva (Switzerland) and the Reina Sofia Centre for Alzheimer's Research (Madrid).

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Caregivers whose eyes wander during playtime -- due to distractions such as smartphones or other technology, for example -- may raise children with shorter attention spans, according to a new study.

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"Brain systems that process rhythmic periodicity when hearing a horse gallop also support the understanding of wave concepts in physics. Similarly, understanding gravity involves visualizing causal motion, like an apple falling from a tree; energy flow uses the same system as sensing warmth from a fire or the sun; and understanding how one concept relates to others in an equation uses the same brain systems that are used to comprehend sentences describing quantities."

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"The fMRI images from this small sample suggest that, for children with ASD, a simple motor task requires the same extensive degree of motor planning as does the imitation of a complex, meaningless gesture. This suggests that the sensorimotor integration pathways in the autistic brain may contribute to the difficulties demonstrated by children with autism when learning new tasks requiring imitation of others."

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"An innovative collaboration between neuroscientists and developmental psychologists that investigated how infants' brains process other people's action provides the first evidence that directly links neural responses from the motor system to overt social behavior in infants."

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"Increasing exposure to outdoor light is the key to reducing the myopia (short-sightedness) epidemic in children, according to ground-breaking research by Australian optometrists. Children need to spend more than an hour and preferably at least two hours a day outside to help prevent myopia from developing and progressing, say experts."

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"Our studies show that babies are very tuned into other people's anger," Repacholi said. "For parents, it's important to be mindful of how powerful that emotion is for babies." Added Meltzoff, "The babies are 'emotion detectives.' They watch and listen to our emotions, remember how we acted in the past, and use this to predict how we will act in the future. How long these first impressions last is an important question."

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"The imaging detected abnormal white matter tracts in the SPD subjects that serve as connections for the auditory, visual and somatosensory (tactile) systems involved in sensory processing, including their connections between the left and right halves of the brain. The abnormal microstructure of sensory white matter tracts shown by DTI in kids with SPD likely alters the timing of sensory transmission, so that processing of sensory stimuli and integrating information across multiple senses becomes difficult or impossible."

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“What we found is if you practice a slightly modified version of a task you want to master, you actually learn more and faster than if you just keep practicing the exact same thing multiple times in a row,” said lead researcher Pablo Celnik, from Johns Hopkins University, in a statement."

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"Studies show that responding to a baby's needs (not letting a baby "cry it out") has been shown to influence the development of conscience; positive touch affects stress reactivity, impulse control and empathy; free play in nature influences social capacities and aggression; and a set of supportive caregivers (beyond the mother alone) predicts IQ and ego resilience as well as empathy. The United States has been on a downward trajectory on all of these care characteristics, according to Narvaez. Instead of being held, infants spend much more time in carriers, car seats and strollers than they did in the past. Only about 15 percent of mothers are breast-feeding at all by 12 months, extended families are broken up and free play allowed by parents has decreased dramatically since 1970."

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"Researchers looked at how mothers responded to their 12-month-olds during book reading, puppet play, and toy play. They found that the babies made more speech-like sounds during reading than when playing with puppets or toys. They also discovered mothers were more responsive to these types of sounds while reading to their child than during the other activities."