• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.265-273
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• 2015

Children with autistic spectrum disorder(ASD) have a strength in visual process and systemizing, and they show interest toward things and machines. Therefore, robots have been suggested as a useful tool for the rehabilitation of the children with ASD. A robot can attract children's interest and attention, and it can provide simplified social stimulus. A robot can be applied repetitively, and programmed for the special needs of an individual child. In this study, we review literature related to the use of robots for the rehabilitation of children with ASD. For this purpose, related literature was searched with the keywords of autism and robot. We selected eleven domestic papers, and analyzed their contents to identify robots, stimulus of robots, experiment process and dependent variables.

• Journal of IKEEE
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.1440-1447
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• 2019

Currently, the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders in children is reported to be higher and shows various types of disorders. In particular, they are having difficulty in communication due to communication impairment in the area of social communication and need to be improved through training. Thus, this study proposes a method of acquiring voice information through a microphone mounted on a robot designed through preliminary research and using this information to make intelligent motions. An ANN(Artificial Neural Network) was used to classify the speech data into robot motions, and we tried to improve the accuracy by combining the Recurrent Neural Network based on Convolutional Neural Network. The preprocessing of input speech data was analyzed using MFCC(Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient), and the motion of the robot was estimated using various data normalization and neural network optimization techniques. In addition, the designed ANN showed a high accuracy by conducting an experiment comparing the accuracy with the existing architecture and the method of human intervention. In order to design robot motions with higher accuracy in the future and to apply them in the treatment and education environment of children with autism.

• Biomolecules & Therapeutics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.374-382
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• 2017

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) remains unexplained and untreated despite the high attention of research in recent years. Aside from its various characteristics is the baffling male preponderance over the female population. Using a validated animal model of ASD which is the telomerase reverse transcriptase overexpressing mice (TERT-tg), we conducted ASD-related behavioral assessments and protein expression experiments to mark the difference between male and females of this animal model. After statistically analyzing the results, we found significant effects of TERT overexpression in sociability, social novelty preference, anxiety, nest building, and electroseizure threshold in the males but not their female littermates. Along these differences are the male-specific increased expressions of postsynaptic proteins which are the NMDA and AMPA receptors in the prefrontal cortex. The vGluT1 presynaptic proteins, but not GAD, were upregulated in both sexes of TERT-tg mice, although it is more significantly pronounced in the male group. Here, we confirmed that the behavioral effect of TERT overexpression in mice was male-specific, suggesting that the aberration of this gene and its downstream pathways preferentially affect the functional development of the male brain, consistent with the male preponderance in ASD.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.287-293
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• 2011

Objectives : The region of chromosome 5p14 is known to be associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The cadherin9 (CDH9) and cadherin10 (CDH10) genes are located in the region of chromosome 5p14 and reported to be associated with ASD in the Caucasian population. We performed an association study to identify if single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located on the CDH9 and CDH10 genes are associated in the Korean population. Methods : Genomic DNA was extracted from the blood of 214 patients with ASD and 258 controls. SNPs selected from two genes were genotyped using an Illumina Golden-Gate Genotyping assay with VeraCode technology. Statistical analysis was performed using SAS and Plink software. Results : All controls and ASD patients were in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. In the results of logistic regression analyses for the genotype model and the chi-square test for the allele model, we found that SNPs on the CDH9 and CDH10 genes were not associated with ASD. Conclusion : Our data suggests that the CDH9 and CDH10 genes are not associated with ASD in the Korean population.

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.541-549
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• 2012

Objectives: This study was undertaken in order to evaluate a potential mechanism involved in gastro-intestinal problems observed in autistic subjects and uses an animal model of autism investigation. Methods: BTBR T+tf/J, a mouse strain with typical socio-behavioral characteristics of autistic subjects and FVB mice with highly social behaviors as the control strain were used. Both genders of mice aged three weeks and six months were used from four separate litters for each strain. Serum was prepared following cardiac puncture, and mesenteric lymph nodes were collected for in vitro stimulation and enumeration of major immune cell proportion. Results: The level of serum IgA was significantly enhanced in six-month-old BTBR mice compared with three-week-old BTBR, which was not observed with the FVB control mice. The serum IgE level was also higher among BTBR mice than among age-sex matched FVB mice, respectively. Considering the ratio of interleukin-4 vs interferon-gamma production from mesenteric lymph node T cells, skewedness toward type-2 reactivities was observed. In addition, the proportion of B cells in mesenteric lymph nodes was significantly higher in BTBR mice than in FVB mice. Conclusion: Upregulation of mucosal immunity related with enhanced type-2 immune reactivity observed in BTBR mice could be involved with the etiology of gastro-intestinal abnormalities in autism.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.39-49
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• 2020

The prosody of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has several abnormal features, including monotonous speech. The purpose of this study was to compare acoustic features between an ASD group and a typically developing (TD) group and within the ASD group. The study also examined audience perceptions of the lengthening effect of increasing the number of syllables. 50 participants were divided into two groups (20 with ASD and 30 TD), and they were asked to imitate a total of 28 sentences. In the auditory-perceptual evaluation, seven participants chose sentence types in 115 sentences. Pitch, intensity, speech rate, and pitch slope were used to analyze the significant differences. In conclusion, the ASD group showed higher pitch and intensity and a lower overall speaking rate than the TD group. Moreover, there were significant differences in s2 slope of interrogative sentences. Finally, based on the auditory-perceptual evaluation, only 4.3% of interrogative sentences produced by participants with ASD were perceived as declarative sentences. The cause of this abnormal prosody has not been clearly identified; however, pragmatic ability and other characteristics of autism are related to ASD prosody. This study identified prosodic ASD patterns and suggested the need to develop treatments to improve prosody.

• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.91-101
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to investigate laryngeal characteristics in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). A total of 50 children participated, including eight children aged 2 to 4 years old diagnosed with ASD and 42 normal controls at the same age. All children recorded X-ray images of the midsagittal plane of the cervical spine and larynx, and compared the laryngeal positions of ASD and control. In addition, samples of children with vowel prolongation were collected and analyzed for acoustic parameters. X-rays showed that the height of the hyoid bone in the normal group was the lowest at 3 years of age, and ascended at 4 years of age. Nevertheless, the distance from the external acoustic meatus to the hyoid bone was longest at age 4. 4-year-olds with explosive language development showed laryngeal height elevation and anteriorization. In contrast, the hyoid height of the ASD group of all ages was lower than that of the control group, and there was no difference in the hyoid position between the ages. As a result of acoustic evaluation, PFR, vFo, and vAm were significantly higher ASD than control. Low laryngeal height of ASD children may be associated with delayed language development. PFR, vFo, and vAm seem to be voice markers showing the difference between normal and ASD children.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.79-90
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• 2006

Social deficits are the most critical and core deficits of the children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder(ASD) and they are qualitatively as well as qualitatively different from typically developing children. It is proposed that the attachment between the mother and the autistic child should be promoted foremost and early as possible, to improve social deficits, just like early social developments in normal children depend largely on interactions between the mother and the child who are attached to each other we have developed an interventional program, 'Attachment Promotion Therapy', largely based on the attachment theory. The Attachment promotion Therapy mandates the participation of both the mother and the autistic child, and consists of mutually enjoying play activities, close physical contacts and parental training on intense mother-child interactions, focusing on improving maternal sensitivity, responsiveness, and nurturing behaviors during their interactions. The program was found to be effective in improving attachment behaviors, attachment security and acquiring joint attention skills. Attachment Promotion Therapy is therefore proposed here as the important earliest intervention method for children with ASD and could become the base for many other educational and therapeutic interventions.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2015.05a
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• pp.397-398
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• 2015

본 연구의 목적은 행동-감정 반영 중심의 공감기술 증진 부모훈련이 자폐스펙트럼 장애 아동의 사회기술과 일상생활 기능에 미치는 효과를 알아보고자 하는 것이다. 연구대상자는 만 3세-7세의 남녀 35명이 참여하였고, 부모훈련은 주 2회씩 총 10회기를 실시하였다. 부모훈련의 내용구성은 사전검사와 전문가를 통한 내용타당도 검증을 실시한 후에 적용하였고, 자료처리는 SPSS 18.0을 이용하였다. 부모교육 프로그램의 전과 후의 효과를 검증하기 위해서 통제집단 사전사후검사설계를 하였다. 효과검정은 ANCOVA를 하였다. 연구결과 부모훈련실시 후, 자페스펙트럼장애아동의 사회기술과 일상생활기능을 증진시키는데 효과가 있었다. 결론적으로 행동-반영중심의 공감기술증진 부모훈련은 자폐스펙트럼장애 아동의 사회기술과 일상생활 기능 증진에 효과가 있었다.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.119-126
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• 2010

Synaptic adhesion molecules mediate synapse formation, maturation and maintenance. These proteins are localized at synaptic sites in neuronal axons and dendrites. These proteins function as a bridge of synaptic cleft via interaction with another synaptic adhesion molecules in the opposite side. They can interact with scaffold proteins via intracellular domain and recruit many synaptic proteins, signaling proteins and synaptic vesicles. Scaffold proteins function as a platform in dendritic spines or axonal terminals. Recently, many genetic studies have revealed that synaptic adhesion molecules and scaffold proteins are important in neurodevelopmental disorders, psychotic disorders, mood disorders and anxiety disorders. In this review, fundamental mechanisms of synapse formation and maturation related with synaptic adhesion molecules and scaffold proteins are introduced and their psychiatric implications addressed.