Neurodevelopmental disorders Flashcards
What are neurodevelopmental disorders?
Disorders/issues based off early development
What has the brain evolved?
Approach and avoid system
What areas of the brain control language, decision making and reactions?
Left frontal lobe, Left hemisphere and Right hemisphere
What connects the lobes in the brain?
White matter tracts
What is a teenage brain like?
Has ability to reason with a heightened need for basic reward (mesolimbic) and lower capacity (frontal) to buffer immediate influences
What are teenagers more likely to make?
Risky decisions - poor impulse controlW
What do most children have to develop social skills?
Innate preferences for social attentiveness
How do children communicate?
Gestures - shared communication, normal communication allows for sharing of thoughts
What is the theory of mind?
Feeling safe and attached, know others intentions - survival reasons
Why could parental influence be said to cause Autism?
Cold rejecting parents - ‘refrigerator mother’
What was controversial research in response to autism causes?
Wakefield’s research about the MMR vaccine
What is autism defined as?
An absence in areas of socialisation, language development, and behaviour.
What are the biological causes of autism?
- Genetics - 91% concordance rates in MZ twins
- Illness - rubella, meningitis and encephalitis - direct cause of neurological abnormality
- Developmental delay in communication
What are the signs of social impairment?
- Absent/impaired imitation
- Absent/abnormal social play
- Inability to make friends
- Lack of wanting to seek comfort from others in times of distress
What are the signs of language impairment?
- No developmentally appropriate mode of communication
- Absent/abnormal nonverbal communication
- Abnormalities in production of speech
- Pronominal reversals (use of ‘he’ instead of ‘I’)
- Lack of understanding about symbolic language
