Brain scans reveal how social training rewires teens with autism and schizophrenia

Copied word for word from the study's registry entry, so the wording is the study team's rather than ours.

Inclusion Criteria: Participants in this study will be 30 ASD adolescents and 30 demographically matched adolescents with SSD who undergo the PEERS social skills training program. Participants will be between the ages of 12-18 years, and mostly male reflecting the higher prevalence in the population of ASD, and to a lesser extent, SSD. The ASD adolescents will be recruited through the Loma Linda University Behavioral Health Institute (LLU BHI), LLU Behavior Medicine Center (BMC), and LLU Department of Psychology Child and Family Center (CFC). The SSD adolescents will be recruited from the BMC inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient, and standard outpatient programs for youth with psychosis. Thirty demographically comparable typically developing (TD) controls will be recruited through community samples, and in compliance with the LLU Institutional Review Board (IRB) standards. Before enrolling in the proposed MRI studies, prospective ASD participants will undergo testing with experienced assessors. Clinical diagnosis will be confirmed using both the Autism Diagnostic Interview- Revised, and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd edition. SSD participants will be screened using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) Axis I diagnoses, with additional modules for assessment of childhood disorders. SSD participants must meet criteria for schizophrenia, schizophreniform, schizoaffective disorder, or unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorder. All study participants will have verbal IQ as well as Full Scale IQ of 70 or higher on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI-II) to ensure they will have the language and cognitive ability to participate in an MRI scan. Exclusion Criteria: Exclusion criteria will include history of significant medical/neurologic conditions that would affect neuroimaging interpretation (e.g., epilepsy, tumor), and any psychiatric history for TD controls. Participants with any MRI contraindications (e.g., history of metal fragment injury or metal implants, current orthodontic braces or nonremovable retainers) will also be excluded in compliance with scanner safety standards.