Although Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are generally assumed to be lifelong, we review evidence that between 3% and 25% of children reportedly lose their ASD diagnosis and enter the normal range of cognitive, adaptive and social skills. Predictors of recovery include relatively high intelligence, receptive language, verbal and motor imitation, and motor development, but not overall symptom severity. Earlier age of diagnosis and treatment, and a diagnosis of Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified are also favorable signs. The presence of seizures, mental retardation and genetic syndromes are unfavorable signs, whereas head growth does not predict outcome. Controlled studies that report the most recovery came about after the use of behavioral techniques. Residual vulnerabilities affect higher-order communication and attention. Tics, depression and phobias are frequent residual co-morbidities after recovery. Possible mechanisms of recovery include: normalizing input by forcing attention outward or enriching the environment; promoting the reinforcement value of social stimuli; preventing interfering behaviors; mass practice of weak skills; reducing stress and stabilizing arousal. Improving nutrition and sleep quality is non-specifically beneficial.

Recent negative focus on women's academic abilities has fueled disputes over gender disparities in the sciences. The controversy derives, in part, from women's relatively poorer performance in aptitude tests, many of which require skills of spatial reasoning. We used functional magnetic imaging to examine the neural structure underlying shifts in women's performance of a spatial reasoning task induced by positive and negative stereotypes. Three groups of participants performed a task involving imagined rotations of the self. Prior to scanning, the positive stereotype group was exposed to a false but plausible stereotype of women's superior perspective-taking abilities; the negative stereotype group was exposed to the pervasive stereotype that men outperform women on spatial tasks; and the control group received neutral information. The significantly poorer performance we found in the negative stereotype group corresponded to increased activation in brain regions associated with increased emotional load. In contrast, the significantly improved performance we found in the positive stereotype group was associated with increased activation in visual processing areas and, to a lesser degree, complex working memory processes. These findings suggest that stereotype messages affect the brain selectively, with positive messages producing relatively more efficient neural strategies than negative messages.

Psychosocial theories focused on the intrafamilial transmission of anxiety often concentrate on specific parenting behaviors that increase risk of anxiety disorders in children. Two such theories-affectionate versus affectionless control-both implicate parenting, although differently, in the pathogenesis of childhood anxiety. The present article reviews observational studies that focus on interactions between parents and children in anxious families in order to examine critically each of these two models. We divide these observational studies into two groups: those that seek to characterize the behavior of anxious parents (top-down studies) versus parents of anxious children (bottom-up studies). This approach reveals that there is a consistent relationship between controlling parental behavior in families with anxiety-disordered children as well as a consistent relationship between parental behavior low in warmth and families with anxiety-disordered parents. The present article discusses the implications of the pattern that unfolds from the observational studies of the last decade and provides suggestions for future research in the area.

Three studies examined the impact of stereotype messages on men's and women's performance of a mental rotation task involving imagined self-rotations. Experiment 1 established baseline differences between men and women; women made 12% more errors than did men. Experiment 2 found that exposure to a positive stereotype message enhanced women's performance in comparison with that of another group of women who received neutral information. In Experiment 3, men who were exposed to the same stereotype message emphasizing a female advantage made more errors than did male controls, and the magnitude of error was similar to that for women from Experiment 1. The results suggest that the gender gap in mental rotation performance is partially caused by experiential factors, particularly those induced by sociocultural stereotypes.

The objective of this study was to assess the state of innervation in levator ani muscle sites using muscle histopathology. Asymptomatic women and patients with genitourinary prolapse were included. Histopathologic analysis allows indirect assessment of a muscle's innervation. Therefore, levator ani muscle was collected in a standardized fashion during abdominal surgery and frozen in the operating room using isopentane slush cooled by liquid nitrogen. Serial sections of levator ani muscle in cross-section were studied with standard histochemical and immunohistochemical techniques. The staining patterns from these histochemical techniques allowed quantitative determination of the ratios of fiber types I, IIA, and IIB and their fiber diameters. Objective assessment of fiber type grouping was performed. The distribution of both fiber type percentage and diameter were non-parametric. Therefore, the Mann-Whitney U-test was used to analyze the data for statistical differences between the means for these variables. There was no statistical difference in levator ani muscle fiber type percentage and diameter in patients with prolapse and/or urinary incontinence when compared to asymptomatic women. Levator ani muscles have a higher proportion of slow fibers (66%) than found in other human female muscle (48%). There was no evidence for denervation/reinnervation in any of the biopsy specimens. In this study, levator ani muscle biopsies from incontinent and/or prolapse patients were neither denervated nor reinnervated.

MRP is a recently identified ATP-binding cassette transporter. We previously established that MRP confers resistance to a spectrum of natural product cytotoxic drugs [Kruh, G.D.,(1994) Cancer Res. 54, 1649-1652], that expression of MRP is associated with enhanced drug efflux [Breuninger, L.M.,(1995) Cancer Res. 55, 5342-5347], and that MRP transcript is widely expressed in human tissues and solid tumor cell lines [Kruh, G.D.,(1995) J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 87, 1256-1258]. In the present study the relationship between MRP and drug glutathione S-conjugates was examined. We observed that MRP was labeled by azidophenacylglutathione (APA-SG), a photoaffinity analog of glutathione, and that inside-out membrane vesicles prepared from MRP-overexpressing HL60/ADR cells transported this compound. Transport into membrane vesicles was ATP-dependent, sensitive to osmolarity, and saturable with regard to APA-SG and ATP concentrations, with Km values of 15 and 61 microM, respectively. APA-SG transport was competitively inhibited by the natural product cytotoxic drugs daunorubicin, vincristine, and etoposide, with Ki values of 4.8, 3.8, and 5.5 microM, respectively. Oxidized glutathione, the drug-glutathione S-conjugate DNP-SG, the LTD4 antagonist MK571 and arsenate were also competitive inhibitors, with Ki values of 9.0, 23.4, 1.1, and 15.0 microM, respectively. Analysis of the fate of monochlorobimane in MRP transfectants revealed reduced intracellular concentrations of drug-glutathione S-conjugates associated with enhanced efflux and altered intracellular distribution. These results indicate that MRP can transport glutathione conjugates in vitro and in living cells and suggest the possibility that the transporter may represent a link between cellular resistance to some classes of cytotoxic drugs and glutathione-mediated mechanisms of resistance. In addition, the observation that both mildly cationic or neutral natural product cytotoxic drugs and anionic compounds such as DNP-SG, MK571, and arsenate are competitive inhibitors of MRP action suggests that the substrate specificity of the transporter is quite broad.