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Developmental, Behavioural and NDBI Interventions in Autistic Children or at Elevated Likelihood of Autism: A Systematic Review of Neural Outcomes

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A Correction to this article was published on 26 April 2024

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Abstract

According to the principle of neuroplasticity, early repeated and intense exposure to stimuli can lead to changes in brain structure. In line with this view, it has been argued that early interventions for autistic children could have an impact on their neural development. In the present systematic review, we synthesised the available evidence on neural outcomes after early behavioural, developmental and naturalistic developmental behavioural interventions in young autistic children or children at elevated likelihood of autism. Six out of seven selected studies observed post-intervention differences in neural activity and connectivity. However, we observed significant methodological variation and limitations across studies (e.g. small sample sizes). Here, we discuss the field-wide need to address these issues.

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Notes

  1. The authors are aware of the current debate over the use of the preferred terminology by the Autism Community and will refer to the DSM-5 ‘Autism Spectrum Disorder’ as ‘autism’ (Bottema-Beutel et al., 2021). In the present paper, children with a diagnosis of autism will be referred to as ‘autistic children’ as most of the included studies were conducted in English-speaking countries (Keating et al., 2023). However, the authors acknowledge that some would prefer the use of person-first terminology (Buijsman et al., 2022; Taboas et al., 2022).

  2. As beforementioned, an extensive report of the behavioural results of Aaronson et al. (2021), Dawson et al. (2012) and Ventola et al. (2015) can be found, respectively, in Estes et al. (2015), Dawson et al. (2010) and Ventola et al. (2014).

  3. In the present review, p-values and the effect sizes are reported when made available by the authors and to the precision specified by the authors.

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Funding

Arianna Zanatta and Jasmine Siew are supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program—Marie Skłodowska Curie action (Call: H2020-MSCA-ITN-2018; Grant ID: 814302).

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  1. Department of Experimental Clinical and Health Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Arianna Zanatta, Sara van der Paelt , Petra Warreyn & Herbert Roeyers

  2. Labs of Cognitive Neuroscience, Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 300 Longwood Ave, Boston, MA, USA

    Jasmine Siew

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Zanatta, A., Siew, J., van der Paelt , S. et al. Developmental, Behavioural and NDBI Interventions in Autistic Children or at Elevated Likelihood of Autism: A Systematic Review of Neural Outcomes. Rev J Autism Dev Disord (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-024-00437-2

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