A potential biomarker of brain activity in ASD: a pilot fNIRS study in female preschoolers

<p>Looking for visual cortical activity as putative brain biomarker: a pilot fNIR study on autistic<br> female preschoolers.</p> <p>We performed an observational prospective monocentric study in a tertiary care University hospital<br> (IRCCS Stella Maris Foundation, Pisa, IT). We recruited 12 females with idiopathic ASD and 13 sex/age-matched control typically developed peers. Established inclusion criteria were: 1) diagnosis of ASD according to<br> the DSM-5 criteria (APA, 2013); 2) age range: between 3 and 6 years; 3) female gender; 4)<br> negative genetic testing for Fragile X and MECP2; 5) negative history of premature birth or<br> neurologic complications possibly related to delivery and 6) non-verbal IQ &amp;gt; 70. ASD diagnosis has<br> been performed by a multidisciplinary team including a senior child psychiatrist, an experienced<br> clinically trained research child psychologist and a speech-language pathologist during 5-7 days of<br> extensive evaluation. Demographic characteristics and clinical features of experimental cohorts are<br> listed in Tables 1 and 2. Clinical measures such as Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule<br> (ADOS) (Lord et al., 2012), Autism Questionnaire (AQ) &ndash; children&rsquo;s version, cognitive and<br> adaptive profile were systematically collected for each subject using internationally validated<br> scales/interviews, such as Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 2002)<br> and Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-II &ndash;VABS- (Sparrow et al., 2005).<br> All participants reported normal or corrected-to-normal vision.</p>