Neurodevelopmental disorders: Clinical

Pediatric neurodevelopmental disorders cause developmental deficits in areas like movement, language, and cognition, which can interfere with how a person functions independently in society.

In some cases there are specific genes that are thought to play a role. But there are also a number of environmental risk factors like maternal use of alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drugs during pregnancy; preterm birth; and prenatal or childhood exposure to environmental contaminants like lead.

Now the range of deficits can vary from a tic disorder that affects facial movements to global impairments in language and cognition.

Sometimes, there are deficits and delays in achieving development milestones like having fluent speech by age 6.

The neurodevelopmental disorders frequently co-occur; for example, individuals with autism spectrum disorder often have cognitive disability, and many children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or ADHD also have a learning disorder. Usually the symptoms occur in the early developmental period, but sometimes they’re not fully seen until a person is older like in some learning disorders.

For diagnosis, the areas where the deficits are must be substantially below those expected for the individual’s chronological age, and they significantly interfere with most of the daily activities that are appropriate to their chronological age, and impact academic productivity, prevocational and vocational activities, leisure, and play.

According to DSM-5, there are twelve conditions that can be divided into six categories: autism spectrum disorder; ADHD; specific learning disorder; intellectual disabilities which consists of intellectual disability and global developmental delay; communication disorders which include language disorder, speech sound disorder, childhood-onset fluency disorder, and social communication disorder; and motor disorders which is made up of developmental coordination disorder, stereotypic movement disorder, and tic disorders.