Introduction Reelin gene (RELN) codes a large extracellular matrix glycoprotein with serine protease activity and is implicated in the modulation of neuronal signaling, synaptic transmission and plasticity. The reelin plays a fundamental and pivotal role in the development of laminar structures and may be one of the loci contributing to the positive linkage between chromosome 7q and autistic di...

“.......... Perhaps, in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none, or very little: there is only the history of the Europeans in Africa. The rest is largely darkness............ And darkness is not a subject for history” – Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper. This chapter is necessitated so that similar comments to Trevor-Roper’s on African history would be avo...

Aims: Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder. Deficit in sensory functions is one of the characteristics of people with autism, and usually these people show abnormality in processing and correct interpretation of auditory information. Also people with Autism show problems in communicating with others. This review article deals with the accurate understanding of Auditory processing skills...

Perhaps the last major effort to save the world’s great apes from extinction has been launched at a recent meeting held in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of 23 home states of the great apes. The meeting included an unusually broad range of interests for a conservation issue, with businesses, industry and communities joining up with scientists, environmental agencies and UN bodies to ...

There are many comorbid disorders associated with autism spectrum disorders in child and adolescent population. Although obsessive compulsive disorder and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) comorbidity has common in clinical practice, there are few reports about psychopharmacological treatment for obsessive compulsive symptoms in children with ASD in the literacy. We report a successful treatment ...

Objective To study the association between parental depression and maternal antidepressant use during pregnancy with autism spectrum disorders in offspring. Design Population based nested case-control study. Setting Stockholm County, Sweden, 2001-07. Participants 4429 cases of autism spectrum disorder (1828 with and 2601 without intellectual disability) and 43 277 age and sex matched controls i...

Glossary Applied behavior analysis A category of intervention approach for ASD based on principles of reinforcing desired behaviors to effect behavior change, usually improvement in social-communication skills. Examples include Discrete Trial Intervention, Pivotal Response Training, and the Early Start Denver Model. Asperger’s disorder A neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments ...

Growing interest has recently been devoted to partial forms of autism, lying at the diagnostic boundaries of those conditions previously diagnosed as Asperger's Disorder. This latter includes an important retrieval of the European classical psychopathological concepts of adult autism to which Hans Asperger referred in his work. Based on the review of Asperger's Autistische Psychopathie, from fi...