Social perception gaze patterns, symptom severity and resting brain function measured using Arterial Spin Labelling

Autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterised by qualitative alterations in reciprocal social interactions. Some recent studies show alterations in gaze patterns during social perception and rest-functional abnormalities in the ‘social brain network’. This study investigated: i) social perception gaze patterns in children with ASD and controls, ii) the relationship between autism clinical severity and social perception gaze patterns, iii) the relationship between resting cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and social perception gaze patterns. Methods: Nine children with ASD and 9 children with typical development were studied. Eye-tracking was used to detect gaze patterns during presentation of stimuli depicting social scenes. Autism clinical severity was established using the Autism Diagnostic Interview Revised (ADI-R). Arterial spin labelling MRI was used to quantify rCBF. Results: The ASD group looked less at social regions and more at non-social regions than controls. No significant correlation was found between ASD clinical severity and social perception gaze patterns. In the ASD group, gaze behaviour was related to rCBF in the temporal lobe regions at trend level. Positive correlations were found between temporal rCBF and gaze to the face region, while negative correlations were found between temporal rCBF and gaze to non-social regions. Conclusions: These preliminary results suggest that social perception gaze patterns are altered in children with ASD, and could be related to temporal rCBF.

Poland’s internal security as exemplified by the tasks and activities of the Internal Security Agency in the period 2007–2015

The text analyses Poland's internal security illustrated with the example of the tasks and activities of one of the Polish special services, the Internal Security Agency (pol. Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego – ABW). Although the Internal Security Agency was established as a counter-intelligence service, the scope of its tasks and activities places it among the criminal intelligence services, which is poorly effective in terms of the eradication of crime targeted at the state's internal security. The analysis of the issues of state security in the context of the ISA's activity has been elaborated in the present text with the following research questions: (1) To what extent does the statutory scope of the ISA's tasks lower the effectiveness of the actions aimed at combating crime threatening state security? (2) To what extent does the structural pathology inside the ISA lower the effectiveness of the actions aimed at combating crime threatening state security? The text features an extensive analysis of three major issues: (1) the ISA's statutory tasks (with particular consideration of de lege lata and de lege ferenda regulations), (2) the dysfunctional character of the ISA's activity in relation to the scope of its statutory tasks, and (3) the structural pathology resulting from the 'politicisation' of the Internal Security Agency.