Skip to main content

Home/ Autism Teachers/ Group items tagged of

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Tero Toivanen

How to unleash your brain's inner genius - life - 03 June 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...-your-brains-inner-genius.html

savant autism brain genius talent

shared by Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09 - Cached
  • A flurry of research published earlier this year in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B paints a very different picture. It turns out that these skills are far more common than previously thought. They may even arise from traits found in the general population, implying that savants are not fundamentally different from the rest of us. What's more, these skills may only blossom after years of obsessive practice, raising the question of whether many more people might cultivate similar skills, if only they had the motivation.
  • One of the biggest clues to the origins of savant talent lies in the fact that savants are far more common within the autistic population than among people with other mental difficulties.
  • Previously, about 1 in 10 people with autism were thought to have a special ability but in April, Patricia Howlin at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London found a much higher figure in the autistic adults she surveyed for savant skills or an exceptional cognitive ability.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Savant skills included more fully developed talents, such as being able to name the elevation of both the sun and the moon at any time of day, on any specified date; being able to name the day of the week for any date in the distant past or future (a talent known as calendrical calculation) and perfect pitch. Importantly, the abilities and the skills had to be exceptional by the standards of the general population, but also well above the individual's overall level of ability. In total, roughly 30 per cent had some kind of special ability (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 364, p 1359).
  • For musical savants like Paravicini, Happé suggests that a bias towards small details might have led their developing brains to focus more on the exact notes than the overall melody, leading to perfect pitch and an exceptional musical memory. In art, a focus on small regions of a picture could lead to accurate perspective drawing.
  • Most people find this harder when they are shown an unsegmented version of the pattern versus a segmented one, but people with autism don't have this preference, demonstrating their skill at seeing a whole in terms of its parts even if there are no obvious dividing lines (see diagram). "It shows they are able to do the segmentation in their minds," says Winner. The precocious realists did not have this preference either, indicating a talent for realistic drawing may arise from this isolated trait commonly found in autism (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, vol 364, p 1449).
  • Although these results help to pinpoint exactly what it is about autism that predisposes people to talent, it's still not clear why an eye for detail is more common in autistic people in the first place. Clues might lie in the work of Simon Baron-Cohen from the University of Cambridge, which suggests that people with autism are "hypersensitive" to sensory information
  • Daniel Tammet, a prodigious savant who has memorised pi to 22,514 digits, believes his own talents have arisen from a special ability to connect different pieces of information together. "Savant abilities are linked to a highly associative type of thinking, an extreme form of a kind that everyone does - examples would include daydreaming, puns and the use of metaphors," he says.
  • The few studies of savant brains certainly suggest they are physically different from the average brain. For example, when Happé and Wallace studied the brain of a savant gifted at art, calendrical calculation and memory, they found his cortex was thicker in the areas associated with visuospatial processing and calculation and thinner in other regions associated with social cognition, compared with people who were neither savants nor autistic. But whether these differences were innate or grew with lifelong practice was still unclear.
  • The answer to that question may come from an unlikely source - a study of London taxi drivers who have acquired an encyclopedic memory of the streets of London known as "the Knowledge". Given that taxi drivers must remember the layout of 25,000 streets and the location of thousands of places of interest, and retrieve the information instantaneously, some researchers like Happé believe the Knowledge qualifies as a savant-like skill.
  • Eleanor Maguire and colleagues at the Institute of Neurology at University College London and colleagues found that drivers with the Knowledge have a bigger rear hippocampus than bus drivers and adults who do not drive taxis. In addition, the hippocampus appears to be larger the longer a taxi driver has been working, and shrinks once they retire (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0288).
  • In fact, it seems the remaining mystery is not so much how savants achieve their talents, but what drives them in the first place. "Motivation is a big unknown," says Wallace. "It's an enormous driving force in giftedness and in savants, but we don't know a lot about it."
  • One person who has something of an inside view on what contributes to savant ability is Paravicini's mentor, Adam Ockelford, a professor of music at Roehampton University in London who has watched Paravicini's talent blossom since the age of 4. When they first met, Paravicini was entirely self-taught and bashed at his plastic keyboard with his fists and elbows to reproduce the sounds he was hearing. It was only after years of practice that his technical skills developed.
  • But as researchers like Wallace have suggested, Paravicini seemed motivated way beyond the average music student. In fact, he seemed to be playing as if his life depended on it, and Ockelford thinks it's this that truly sets savants apart from their peers. "The survival instinct gets turned with extraordinary force into something else - in Derek's case music," says Ockelford. "When people see Derek, they think it is amazing, almost religious. But to me, it's mainly just hard work."
  • Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09
     
    But now researchers are beginning to unearth clues as to how savants' formidable brains work, and that in turn is changing our view of what it means to be a savant.
Tero Toivanen

Autistic Aphorisms: Intelligence, Genius, and Autism - 0 views

autisticaphorisms.blogspot.com/...ligence-genius-and-autism.html

aphorisms intelligence autism genius Pythagoras Plato Aristotle Archimedes Newton Gauss Einstein

shared by Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Professor James Flynn has incorporated an interesting sidebar into his book What is Intelligence? In it he lists his seven choices for Western civilization’s greatest minds: Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Archimedes, Newton, Gauss, and Einstein.
  • Hundreds of research teams, maybe even thousands by now, have so convinced themselves that intelligence must originate from inside our skulls, have so convinced themselves that only within networks of cranial neurons can be found the secrets to humanity’s growing mental capacity, that all have managed to overlook completely the far more plausible alternative—the one existing right before our very eyes.
  • It is time to reconsider that conventional wisdom, time to regard genius with a different set of eyes; for genius is not a function of greater intelligence, genius is the description of how intelligence grows.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Look at the content of any intelligence test—language, arithmetic, patterns, designs. What we measure with the aid of those I.Q. booklets are not the abilities we inherited from out our animal past, but instead their exact counterpart; we measure only those skills the species has been adding throughout all its history since. In some sense, an intelligence test measures the modernness of an individual; an intelligence test measures an individual’s ability to appropriate for himself the same set of skills the species has been appropriating as a whole—skills that do not find their origin in our biological nature, but instead owe their existence to the strange, brewing mixture of non-biological pattern, structure and form that has been rapidly taking shape all around us.
  • The unusual characteristics of humanity’s transformational individuals are not the result of their genius, they are genius’s prerequisite
  • But counter to prevailing wisdom, there are many autistic individuals—most likely a majority—who do make substantial progress by means of an alternative perceptual course, a course that allows them not only to navigate meaningfully their surrounding world, but also to assimilate, if somewhat awkwardly and belatedly, to the human species itself (and thereby explaining how autism, estimated to be present in nearly one percent of the human population, could go entirely unrecognized until as recently as sixty-five years ago).
  • all autistic individuals must crystallize their existence by means of this alternative perceptual course—it becomes, in essence, autism’s most salient feature.
  • The unusual behaviors and interests of autistic children—lining up toys, staring at ceiling fans, twirling, flapping hands repeatedly, fascination with knobs, buttons, switches, letters, shapes and digits, watching the same video again and again, singing the same song over and over—these activities betray a form of perception completely unlike that of most other children, a perception noticeably absent in social and biological focus, but also noticeably drawn to symmetry, repetition and pattern.
  • The unusual routines of autistic children are the natural, indeed the expected, mode of expression for a form of perception engaged primarily by the structural aspects of the non-social, non-biological world.
  • Autistic individuals would have been the first to notice the inherent structure contained in the natural world—the geometry of plants, the isomorphisms of natural objects, the logic of the celestial seasons—only they would have had motivation to embrace such form, only they would have had the need to perceive nature’s symmetry, repetition and pattern in order to form their cognitive grounding.
  • We know only bits and pieces about the four Greeks on Professor Flynn’s list, but filling in with the traits from the list’s more modern members, we can reasonably summarize all the unifying characteristics: late- or strange-talking, socially awkward, irascible, obsessed with structure, compelled by form, unusually—not necessarily greatly—intelligent.
  • The continuing medicalization of autism, the insistent demonization of autism’s spontaneous effect—these carry the danger of an unforeseen consequence. For the cure of autism will not be the end of a tragic brain disorder; autism’s eradication will not see the passing of a troubling mental disease. The removal of autism from the entire human species will produce only an ironic solution to the mystery of our expanding human intelligence, it will produce the ignoble end to the Flynn effect.
  • When confronted by data that runs counter to our accustomed way of seeing things, we as humans have but two choices: we can try to explain the results away, or we can adjust our perception of the experienced world. The former choice paves the all-too-common road of modern academic science; the latter, as described above, walks the more promising path of genius.
  • Autism is not a mental illness, not a brain disorder, it is instead the source of humanity’s changing perception of its experienced world; it is, with care and understanding, genius’s fertile soil.
  • Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09
     
    Autism is not a mental illness, not a brain disorder, it is instead the source of humanity's changing perception of its experienced world; it is, with care and understanding, genius's fertile soil.
Tero Toivanen

Facilitated communication: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article - 1 views

www.absoluteastronomy.com/...Facilitated_communication

autism Facilitated Communication FC facilitator dyspraxia mental retardation research Independent Typing

shared by Tero Toivanen on 14 Mar 10 - Cached
  • The procedure is controversial, since a majority of peer reviewPeer reviewPeer review is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work, research, or ideas to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Peer review requires a community of experts in a given field, who are qualified and able to perform impartial review...ed scientific studies conclude that the typed language output attributed to the clients is directed or systematically determined by the therapists who provide facilitated assistance. Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have reportedly gone on to type independently.
  • Harvard UniversityHarvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units... psychologist Daniel WegnerDaniel WegnerDaniel M. Wegner is an American social psychologist. He is a professor of psychology at Harvard University and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is known for his work on mental control and conscious will, and for originating the study of transactive memory and... has argued that facilitated communication is a striking example of the ideomotor effectIdeomotor effectThe ideomotor effect is a psychological phenomenon wherein a subject makes motions unconsciously. As in reflexive responses to pain, the body sometimes reacts reflexively to ideas alone without the person consciously deciding to take action..., the well-known phenomenon whereby individuals' expectations exert unconscious influence over their motor actions. Even FC users and proponents do acknowledge the possibility of facilitators at times "guiding" users, consciously or unconsciously. Other theorists (Donnellan and Leary, 1995) argue that autism is in significant part characterized by dyspraxia (a movement disorder), and that there exists a synchronistic "dance" to communication in all mammalian social interaction which accounts for the mixed results in validation studies.
  • Stephen von Tetzchner, the author of another leading textbook on Augmentative and Alternative CommunicationAugmentative and alternative communicationAugmentative and alternative communication is communication for those with impairments or restrictions on the production or comprehension of spoken or written language.-Definition :... has done theoretical research about facilitated communication. In his opinion "The existing evidence clearly demonstrates that facilitating techniques usually led to automatic writingAutomatic writingAutomatic writing is the process or production of writing material that does not come from the conscious thoughts of the writer. Practitioners say that the writer's hand forms the message, with the person being unaware of what will be written...., displaying the thoughts and the attitudes of the facilitators."
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Mark Mostert (2001) says: "Previous reviews of Facilitated Communication (FC) studies have clearly established that proponents' claims are largely unsubstantiated and that using FC as an intervention for communicatively impaired or noncommunicative individuals is not recommended." In March 2007, Scott Lilienfeld included facilitated communication on a list of treatments that have the potential to cause harm in clients, published in the APSAssociation for Psychological ScienceThe Association for Psychological Science , previously the American Psychological Society, is a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in research, application, teaching, and the improvement of human welfare... journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.
  • The phrase "independent typing" is defined by supporters of FC as "typing without physical support", i.e., without being touched by another person. Skeptics of FC do not agree that this definition of independence suffices because of the possibility of influence by the facilitator. For example, Sue RubinSue RubinSue Rubin is a functionally non-verbal published autistic author who was the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary Autism Is A World in which she communicated via the controversial communication technique of facilitated communication...., an FC user featured in the autobiographical documentary Autism Is A World, reportedly types without anyone touching her; however, she reports that she requires a facilitator to hold the keyboard and offer other assistance.
  • Tero Toivanen on 14 Mar 10
     
    The procedure is controversial, since a majority of peer reviewed scientific studies conclude that the typed language output attributed to the clients is directed or systematically determined by the therapists who provide facilitated assistance. Some peer-reviewed scientific studies have indicated instances of valid FC, and some FC users have reportedly gone on to type independently.
Tero Toivanen

Autism disorders might be reversible. | - I Teach Autism.com - - 0 views

www.iteachautism.com/...-or-disorder-may-be-reversible

autism fever epigenetics locus coeruleus brain neurobiology LC-NA system theory Albert Einstein College

shared by Tero Toivanen on 08 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.
  • The central tenet of the theory, published in the March issue of Brain Research Reviews, is that autism is a developmental disorder caused by impaired regulation of the locus coeruleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain stem that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body.
  • The new theory stems from decades of anecdotal observations that some autistic children seem to improve when they have a fever, only to regress when the fever ebbs.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Einstein researchers contend that scientific evidence directly points to the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic (LC-NA) system as being involved in autism. “The LC-NA system is the only brain system involved both in producing fever and controlling behavior,” says co-author Dominick P. Purpura, M.D., dean emeritus and distinguished professor of neuroscience at Einstein.
  • The locus coeruleus has widespread connections to brain regions that process sensory information.
  • It is also involved in a variety of complex behaviors, such as attentional focusing (the ability to concentrate attention on environmental cues relevant to the task in hand, or to switch attention from one task to another).
  • “What is unique about the locus coeruleus is that it activates almost all higher-order brain centers that are involved in complex cognitive tasks,” says Dr. Mehler.
  • Drs. Purpura and Mehler hypothesize that in autism, the LC-NA system is dysregulated by the interplay of environment, genetic, and epigenetic factors (chemical substances both within as well as outside the genome that regulate the expression of genes). They believe that stress plays a central role in dysregulation of the LC-NA system, especially in the latter stages of prenatal development when the fetal brain is particularly vulnerable.
  • Drs. Purpura and Mehler believe that, in autistic children, fever stimulates the LC-NA system, temporarily restoring its normal regulatory function.
  • the future of autism treatment probably lies in drugs that selectively target certain types of noradrenergic brain receptors or, more likely, in epigenetic therapies targeting genes of the LC-NA system.
  • “You can’t take a complex neuropsychiatric disease that has escaped our understanding for 50 years and in one fell swoop have a therapy that is going to reverse it — that’s folly. On the other hand, we now have clues to the neurobiology, the genetics, and the epigenetics of autism. To move forward, we need to invest more money in basic science to look at the genome and the epigenome in a more focused way.”
  • Tero Toivanen on 08 Jun 09
     
    Scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University have proposed a sweeping new theory of autism that suggests that the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.
Tero Toivanen

Harvey Karp: Cracking the Autism Riddle: Toxic Chemicals, A Serious Suspect in the Auti... - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...the-autism-riddl_b_221202.html

autism toxic chemicals research endocrine disrupting chemicals EDC

shared by Tero Toivanen on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • One group of substances of particular concern is a ubiquitous family of hormone twisting compounds, known as endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).
  • Our exposure to EDCs is no mere theoretical concern. In 2000, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study found detectable phthalates in 99.9% of adults including women of childbearing age.
  • there is evidence that even minuscule amounts of these chemicals -- levels commonly present in a woman's body -- may disturb fetal brain development during highly sensitive periods of neural development known as windows of vulnerability.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Our increasing exposure to EDCs lends support to a new hypothesis about the cause of autism, called the "extreme male theory." This theory, proposed by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues, speculates that autism is caused by something changing a fetus' hormonal balance that then leads to over-masculinization of the developing brain. Could that "something" be the slurry of hormone-altering chemicals we're exposed to every day? Are EDCs the reason autism-type disorders are 4-9 times more common in boys? (Vaccine side effects never show such lopsided impact on boys versus girls...a glaring fact that is totally ignored by those promoting the vaccine theory of autism.)
  • Here is where the very interesting link to EDCs comes into play: EDCs often act as weak estrogens and estrogen feminizines the body, but in a fetus' developing brain estrogen actually has the opposite effect...it causes masculinization.
  • The NCS will establish over one hundred study centers across the US to test the blood of 100,000 newborns for scores of synthetic chemicals, including many EDCs. (Workers have already begun going door-to-door enrolling pregnant moms into the program.) For the next 21 years, scientists will carefully follow the children's health, comparing the body burden of chemicals at birth to diseases developed later in life.
  • Within 3-4 years, we expect to have enough data accumulated to start detecting what chemicals might be linked to autism.
  • Beside the NCS, I support other new studies to look at: 1) the autism risk in vaccinated vs. unvaccinated kids; 2) the metabolism of vaccine ingredients (like aluminum, added to make shots work better), 3) more accurate determinations of the true incidence of autism.
  • Tero Toivanen on 03 Jul 09
     
    The presence of EDCs in women of child-bearing age is especially worrisome. That is because there is evidence that even minuscule amounts of these chemicals -- levels commonly present in a woman's body -- may disturb fetal brain development during highly sensitive periods of neural development known as windows of vulnerability.
Tero Toivanen

News from the Associated Press - newsjournalonline.com - 0 views

hosted.ap.org/...US_MED_AUTISM_RECOVERY

autism research behavioral therapy recover

shared by Tero Toivanen on 09 May 09 - Cached
  • Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it - most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
  • She presented research this week at an autism conference in Chicago that included 20 children who, according to rigorous analysis, got a correct diagnosis but years later were no longer considered autistic.
  • Skeptics question the phenomenon, but University of Connecticut psychology professor Deborah Fein is among those convinced it's real.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • Previous studies have suggested between 3 percent and 25 percent of autistic kids recover. Fein says her studies have shown the range is 10 percent to 20 percent.
  • But even after lots of therapy - often carefully designed educational and social activities with rewards - most autistic children remain autistic. Recovery is "not a realistic expectation for the majority of kids," but parents should know it can happen, Fein said.
  • The children in Fein's study, which is still ongoing, were diagnosed by an autism specialist before age 5 but no longer meet diagnostic criteria for autism. The initial diagnoses were verified through early medical records.
  • The researchers are also doing imaging tests to see if the recovered kids' brains look more like those of autistic or nonautistic children.
  • Imaging scans also are being done to examine brain function in formerly autistic kids.
  • Results from those tests are still being analyzed.
  • Most of the formerly autistic kids got long-term behavior treatment soon after diagnosis, in some cases for 30 or 40 hours weekly.
  • Many also have above-average IQs and had been diagnosed with relatively mild cases of autism. At age 2, many were within the normal range for motor development, able to walk, climb and hold a pencil.
  • Significant improvement suggesting recovery was evident by around age 7 in most cases, Fein said.
  • None of the children has shown any sign of relapse. But nearly three-fourths of the formerly autistic kids have had other disorders, including attention-deficit problems, tics and phobias; eight still are affected.
  • Tero Toivanen on 09 May 09
     
    Leo Lytel was diagnosed with autism as a toddler. But by age 9 he had overcome the disorder. His progress is part of a growing body of research that suggests at least 10 percent of children with autism can "recover" from it - most of them after undergoing years of intensive behavioral therapy.
Tero Toivanen

New Theory Of Autism Suggests Symptoms Or Disorder May Be Reversible - 0 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...090401145312.htm

autism new theory brain

shared by Tero Toivanen on 02 Apr 09 - Cached
  • the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.
  • autism is a developmental disorder caused by impaired regulation of the locus coeruleus, a bundle of neurons in the brain stem that processes sensory signals from all areas of the body.
  • The new theory stems from decades of anecdotal observations that some autistic children seem to improve when they have a fever, only to regress when the fever ebbs.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • This study documented that autistic children experience behavior changes during fever.
  • Einstein researchers contend that scientific evidence directly points to the locus coeruleus–noradrenergic (LC-NA) system as being involved in autism. "The LC-NA system is the only brain system involved both in producing fever and controlling behavior," says co-author Dominick P. Purpura, M.D., dean emeritus and distinguished professor of neuroscience at Einstein.
  • The locus coeruleus has widespread connections to brain regions that process sensory information. It secretes most of the brain's noradrenaline, a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in arousal mechanisms, such as the "fight or flight" response. It is also involved in a variety of complex behaviors, such as attentional focusing (the ability to concentrate attention on environmental cues relevant to the task in hand, or to switch attention from one task to another). Poor attentional focusing is a defining characteristic of autism.
  • "What is unique about the locus coeruleus is that it activates almost all higher-order brain centers that are involved in complex cognitive tasks," says Dr. Mehler.
  • autism, the LC-NA system is dysregulated by the interplay of environment, genetic, and epigenetic factors
  • They believe that stress plays a central role in dysregulation of the LC-NA system, especially in the latter stages of prenatal development when the fetal brain is particularly vulnerable.
  • a higher incidence of autism among children whose mothers had been exposed to hurricanes and tropical storms during pregnancy.
  • autistic children, fever stimulates the LC-NA system, temporarily restoring its normal regulatory function. "This could not happen if autism was caused by a lesion or some structural abnormality of the brain," says Dr. Purpura.
  • future of autism treatment probably lies in drugs that selectively target certain types of noradrenergic brain receptors or, more likely, in epigenetic therapies targeting genes of the LC-NA system.
  • If the locus coeruleus is impaired in autism, it is probably because tens or hundreds, maybe even thousands, of genes are dysregulated in subtle and complex ways," says Dr. Mehler. "The only way you can reverse this process is with epigenetic therapies, which, we are beginning to learn, have the ability to coordinate very large integrated gene networks."
  • "You can't take a complex neuropsychiatric disease that has escaped our understanding for 50 years and in one fell swoop have a therapy that is going to reverse it — that's folly. On the other hand, we now have clues to the neurobiology, the genetics, and the epigenetics of autism. To move forward, we need to invest more money in basic science to look at the genome and the epigenome in a more focused way."
  • Tero Toivanen on 02 Apr 09
     
    the brains of people with autism are structurally normal but dysregulated, meaning symptoms of the disorder might be reversible.
Tero Toivanen

Facing Autism in New Brunswick: Autism Taboo: Shhhh! Don't Mention THEM! - 0 views

autisminnb.blogspot.com/...o-shhhh-dont-mention-them.html

autism mentally retarded intellectually disabled

shared by Tero Toivanen on 03 Jun 09 - Cached
  • It is now politically incorrect to refer to anyone as mentally retarded. The polite and proper term to use now is intellectually disabled. Either way there is very little mention of the fact that many persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnoses are severely intellectually challenged. In the world's autism communities there are many who perceive it as an insult to mention the existence of the intellectually disabled autistic population.
  • some well known autism researchers work hard at showing the world how intelligent autistic persons really are, even those who cannot demonstrate that intelligence with any obvious ability to communicate or function in the real world.
  • The mere mention of the existence of low functioning autistic persons with serious intellectual challenges is forbidden.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The exclusion by autism self advocates of the intellectually disabled autistic population occurs despite the fact that many persons with Autistic Disorder are intellectually disabled. The ICD-10 mentions this fact expressly in its description of Autistic Disorder:
  • Autistic Disorder...In addition to these specific diagnostic features, it is frequent for children with autism to show a range of other nonspecific problems such as fear/phobias, sleeping and eating disturbances, temper tantrums, and aggression. Self-injury (e.g. by wrist-biting) is fairly common, especially when there is associated severe mental retardation.
  • All levels of IQ can occur in association with autism, but there is significant mental retardation in some three-quarters of cases.
  • There are more than 200 known causes of intellectual disability. Some common examples of intellectual disability are: Down syndrome Autism
  • The attempt by higher functioning persons with ASD's and Aspergers to disassociate "autism" from intellectual disability helps stigmatize persons with intellectual disabilities including the many persons with autistic disorder and intellectual disabilities.
  • And some ND's, to counter the fact that most with LFA are retarded, some "famous" autistics like to promote FC as "proof" that they aren't.
  • My cousin is profoundly autistic. He is around 20 and cannot communicate at all, not verbally or in the written word, and has never said a word. Luckily, his family is smart enough to know that if anyone tries use FC on him they will know it is a scam.If a facilitator told my aunt that P was writing poems and understood Shakespeare she would just laugh. She loves P as he is; she knows reality and doesn't try to force him to be someone he isn't.
  • The current Wikipedia article still shows a frequency of 25-70% incidence of mental retardation in people with autism.
  • Yet, the reader is drawn to see not the high percentage (25% is still very high) but the width of the range, therefore there must be something wrong with the ability of standard tests to measure "autistic intelligence".
  • Mentally retarded IMO comes from the intelligence scales. These do not address the learning styles of all people and are inflexible. I do believe there are better ways to understand how someone learns. I also don't believe there are limits on what we learn, the brain's placisity allows us to learn our entire life.
  • I've spoken hundreds of parents and it worries me that so many have problems accepting their children as they are and will be.For some intelligence is the magic word, a kind of hidden cure inside their child.But autistic kids with a normal IQ which they can use function better than those with high IQ's they can't use.
  • I am only concerned about the cases where the FC person NEVER does ANY kind of independent work, which seem to be the majority of FC cases.
  • Tero Toivanen on 03 Jun 09
     
    It is now politically incorrect to refer to anyone as mentally retarded. The polite and proper term to use now is intellectually disabled. Either way there is very little mention of the fact that many persons with Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnoses are severely intellectually challenged. In the world's autism communities there are many who perceive it as an insult to mention the existence of the intellectually disabled autistic population.
Tero Toivanen

Facilitated Communication - 0 views

www.cqcapd.state.ny.us/...fcnatal.htm

facilitated FC facilitated communication

shared by Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09 - Cached
  • Facilitators who work closely with individuals with autism, as well as other developmental disabilities (e.g., mental retardation, cerebral palsy, etc.) report that individuals with little or no language are fully expressive about life experiences, thoughts, feelings, choices, preferences, and decisions, when allowed to communicate through facilitation.
  • Biklen and other proponents of facilitated communication have been strongly opposed to objective, empirical validity testing. They maintain that testing undermines the individual's confidence, places him or her under pressure, and introduces negativism that destroys the communicative exchange.
  • Rather, under the surface of autism is a person with full cognitive faculties. Smith and Belcher (1993) indicate that much of this suggests a basic unwillingness on the part of families, professionals, and caregivers to accept the individuals with disabilities for what they are, thus diminishing the value of the individual in a way that the disability itself could not have.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • Thompson (1993) describes facilitated communication as a classic example of the self-fulfilling prophecy. The facilitator wants to believe that the person with a severe cognitive and language disability is actually of normal to superior intellectual ability. Parents especially want to believe that a way has been found to finally unlock the door to their real son or daughter.
  • In short, people want facilitated communication to work.
  • Advocates of facilitated communication often respond to naysayers, "It can't hurt to try it." Biklen agrees, "It is not harmful to teach people to communicate through pointing." However, he qualifies his claim with the caveat that "it can be harmful if the facilitator over interprets, does not monitor the person's eyes, facilitates when the person is looking away, is not sensitive to the possibility of guiding the person, and asks leading rather than clarifying questions."
  • Some argue that "false communication" may distort beliefs, understanding, and rehabilitative approaches to persons with autism and other developmental disabilities.
  • There are at least 50 legal cases in the U.S. involving allegations of sexual abuse produced through facilitated communication (Berger, 1994). Several such cases have already occurred in Australia, and some have arisen in Europe (Green, 1992).
  • Additionally, facilitated communication in the past few years has been the source of many contested abuse allegations, usually allegedly reported by an individual with very limited unassisted communication skills against a family caregiver or caregivers.
  • With the exception of three empirical studies (Intellectual Disability Review Panel, 1989; Calculator and Singer, 1992; and Velazquez (in press)) which provide preliminary validation of facilitated communication, most of the support for the validity of facilitated communication is based on anecdotal reports.
  • Unfortunately, validity questions surround anecdotal reports of facilitated communication. In general, these reports lack the controls necessary to rule out experimenter biases, reliability concerns, and threats to validity (Cummins and Prior, 1992; Jacobsen, Eberlin, Mulick, Schwartz, Szempruch, and Wheeler, 1994).
  • Although Biklen (1990) admits that facilitator influence is a real possibility, facilitated communications are typically reported as though they are the words of the person with a disability.
  • Without exception, these empirical studies have questioned the authenticity of the communication as truly coming from the individual versus the facilitator.
  • Interdisciplinary Party Report (1988) and the Intellectual Disability Review Panel (1989) both of which examined the source of facilitated communications produced by persons in Australia, and found strong evidence that responses obtained through facilitation were influenced by the facilitator.
  • Gina Green, Director of Research for the New England Center for Autism and Associate Scientist for the E.K. Shriver Center for Mental Retardation, Inc., has reviewed over 150 cases where empirical testing was performed and cites 15 independent conduct evaluations involving 136 individuals with autism and/or mental retardatiion who were alleged to have been taught to communicate via facilitated communication. In none of the cases were investigators able to confirm facilitated communication by the 136 individuals.
  • Tero Toivanen on 30 Mar 09
     
    Facilitated Communication by Natalie Russo [First Published in Quality of Care Newsletter, Issue62, January-February 1995]
Tero Toivanen

Research Unearths New Treatments for Autism - 2 views

www.apa.org/...pi4.html

autism research TEACCH Young Autism Project Lovaas DIR ABA PRT Pivotal Response Training social engagement system middle ear music intensity

shared by Tero Toivanen on 01 Jul 09 - Cached
  • The Utah researchers found that children receiving a combination of the two treatments (Lovaas-type training at school and TEACCH methods at home) showed three to four times greater progress on all outcome tests than did children who received only the school-based treatment. That study was reported in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 2532).
  • Researchers in Washington, D.C., are comparing a discrete trial training approach with a "developmental, individual-difference, relationship based" (DIR) approach, says child psychiatrist Stanley Greenspan, MD, professor of psychiatry at George Washington University Medical School.
  • Psychologist Robert Koegel, PhD, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his colleagues are attempting to tailor a standard treatment to the specific needs of an autistic child and family. The standard treatment is called pivotal response training
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • An initial retrospective study is comparing two groups of 20 children initially diagnosed with autism who were functioning well after two or more years of treatment, either with a discrete trial training approach or the DIR approach. The study aims to determine if treatment differences lead to subtle differences in outcome, for example, in terms of flexibility, emotional range, creativity and richness of the child's inner life. Investigators are planning to follow this research with a prospective, randomized, more rigorous study of the two approaches.
  • "In our previous studies we found out that it looks like you can't just deliver a standard treatment to autistic kids, that there's so much variability among the children that what works for one child doesn't work for another child," he says. "Our hypothesis is that...unless you individualize treatment, you're not going to get the best effect."
  • Researchers at the University of Maryland are testing an intervention to trigger children's "social engagement system," which includes behaviors such as listening, looking, facial expressions and vocalizations that support social interaction, says psychologist Stephen Porges, PhD. The treatment is designed to improve autistic children's ability to interact with others, thereby making them more receptive to traditional therapies.
  • The intervention is based on the theory that tensing the middle ear muscles enables people to pick out the human voice from lower frequency sounds in the environment, Porges says. Treatment involves exercising middle ear muscles by playing music that has been altered to include only frequencies associated with the human voice, which improves one's ability to listen to human voices. This, in turn, stimulates the entire social engagement system, Porges says. About 80 percent of 50 children with autism or other behavioral problems receiving this treatment via five 45-minute sessions in a double blind, randomized controlled study showed marked improvements in listening, language and other communication skills.
  • In a report last year in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders (Vol. 28, No. 1, p. 15-23) evaluating an intensive home-based discrete trial training intervention, Stephen Sheinkopf, PhD, of the University of Miami and Bryna Siegel, PhD, of the University of California, San Francisco, noted that children receiving an average of only 21 hours per week of treatment showed gains in IQ comparable to those achieved by children receiving 32 hours per week. The intensity question remains an issue of importance for the autism community. "If we need 40 hours a week, fine," says psychologist Geraldine Dawson, PhD, of the University of Washington. "But if you only need 25, you have to realize that 40 hours is a tremendous burden not only financially, but on families and on the child."
  • Tero Toivanen on 01 Jul 09
     
    Several treatments, and combinations of treatments, are under intense study.
Tero Toivanen

The Mirror Neuron Revolution: Explaining What Makes Humans Social: Scientific American - 0 views

www.sciam.com/article.cfm

autism mirror neuron social cognition mental disorder

shared by Tero Toivanen on 18 Apr 09 - Cached
  • In recent years, Iacoboni has shown that mirror neurons may be an important element of social cognition and that defects in the mirror neuron system may underlie a variety of mental disorders, such as autism.
  • Mirror neurons are the only brain cells we know of that seem specialized to code the actions of other people and also our own actions. They are obviously essential brain cells for social interactions. Without them, we would likely be blind to the actions, intentions and emotions of other people.
  • The way mirror neurons likely let us understand others is by providing some kind of inner imitation of the actions of other people, which in turn leads us to “simulate” the intentions and emotions associated with those actions. When I see you smiling, my mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, initiating a cascade of neural activity that evokes the feeling we typically associate with a smile.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In 2006 your lab published a paper in Nature Neuroscience linking a mirror neuron dysfunction to autism. How might reduced mirror neuron activity explain the symptoms of autism?
  • Reduced mirror neuron activity obviously weakens the ability of these patients to experience immediately and effortlessly what other people are experiencing, thus making social interactions particularly difficult for these patients. Patients with autism have also often motor problems and language problems. It turns out that a deficit in mirror neurons can in principle explain also these other major symptoms. The motor deficits in autism can be easily explained because mirror neurons are just special types of premotor neurons, brain cells essential for planning and selecting actions. It has been also hypothesized that mirror neurons may be important in language evolution and language acquisition.
  • Thus, a deficit in mirror neurons can in principle account for three major symptoms of autism, the social, motor and language problems.
  • There is convincing behavioral evidence linking media violence with imitative violence. Mirror neurons provide a plausible neurobiological mechanism that explains why being exposed to media violence leads to imitative violence.
  • I think there are two key points to keep in mind. The first one is the one we started with: mirror neurons are brain cells specialized for actions. They are obviously critical cells for social interactions but they can’t explain non-social cognition. The second point to keep in mind is that every brain cell and every neural system does not operate in a vacuum. Everything in the brain is interconnected, so that the activity of each cell reflects the dynamic interactions with other brain cells and other neural systems.
  • Tero Toivanen on 18 Apr 09
     
    In recent years, Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, has shown that mirror neurons may be an important element of social cognition and that defects in the mirror neuron system may underlie a variety of mental disorders, such as autism.
Tero Toivanen

The link between autism and extraordinary ability | Genius locus | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

autism savant extraordinary ability

shared by Tero Toivanen on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • A study published this week by Patricia Howlin of King’s College, London, reinforces this point. It suggests that as many as 30% of autistic people have some sort of savant-like capability in areas such as calculation or music.
  • Francesca Happé of King’s College, London, is one of them. As she observes, obsessional interests and repetitive behaviours would allow someone to practice, albeit inadvertently, whichever skill they were obsessed by. Malcolm Gladwell, in a book called “Outliers” which collated research done on outstanding people, suggested that anyone could become an expert in anything by practising for 10,000 hours. It would not be hard for an autistic individual to clock up that level of practice for the sort of skills, such as mathematical puzzles, that many neurotypicals would rapidly give up on.
  • Simon Baron-Cohen, a doyen of the field who works at Cambridge University, draws similar conclusions. He suggests the secret of becoming a savant is “hyper-systematising and hyper-attention to detail”. But he adds sensory hypersensitivity to the list. His team have shown one example of this using what is known as the Freiburg visual acuity and contrast test, which asks people to identify the gap in a letter “c” presented in four different orientations. Those on the autistic spectrum do significantly better at this than do neurotypicals. That might help explain Dr Happé’s observations about coins and raindrops.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The upshot of these differences is that the columns in an autistic brain seem to be more connected than normal with their close neighbours, and less connected with their distant ones. Though it is an interpretative stretch, that pattern of connection might reduce a person’s ability to generalise (since disparate data are less easily integrated) and increase his ability to concentrate (by drawing together similar inputs).
  • Dr Snyder argues that savant skills are latent in everyone, but that access to them is inhibited in non-savants by other neurological processes. He is able to remove this inhibition using a technique called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation.
  • Tero Toivanen on 24 Apr 09
     
    A study published this week by Patricia Howlin of King's College, London, reinforces this point. It suggests that as many as 30% of autistic people have some sort of savant-like capability in areas such as calculation or music. Moreover, it is widely acknowledged that some of the symptoms associated with autism, including poor communication skills and an obsession with detail, are also exhibited by many creative types, particularly in the fields of science, engineering, music, drawing and painting.
Tero Toivanen

Autism Therapy: pivotal response training | Healing Thresholds - 0 views

autism.healingthresholds.com/...pivotal-response-training

autism therapy Pivotal Response Training PRT ABA Applied Behavioral Analysis

shared by Tero Toivanen on 29 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Future research may allow therapists to know in advance which type of applied behavior analysis (ABA therapy) is most likely to work for any given child with autism.
  • This study of six children was designed to see if it is possible to predict which type of ABA therapy will work for which child with autism.
  • The authors were able to predict which children would respond to pivotal response training, but not which ones would respond to discrete trial training. The authors note that all children were first exposed to pivotal response training and then to discrete trial training and this may have influenced the results. Children who liked toys were more likely to respond to pivotal response training than children who did not like toys.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This study looked at whether or not a type of applied behavior analysis (pivotal response training) could be used to teach play skills to children with autism.
  • . Both children in the study improved their social skills during recess time.
  • Tero Toivanen on 29 Dec 09
     
    Type of training in which certain behaviors are assumed to be crucial for other behaviors. These pivotal behaviors are then targeted so that the behaviors that depend upon them can change as well.
Tero Toivanen

NIMH · Our brains are made of the same stuff, despite DNA differences - 1 views

www.nimh.nih.gov/...-despite-dna-differences.shtml

nimh brains dna differences gene prefrontal cortex schizophrenia autism research study genetic variation neuroscience neurons

shared by Tero Toivanen on 30 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • “Having at our fingertips detailed information about when and where specific gene products are expressed in the brain brings new hope for understanding how this process can go awry in schizophrenia, autism and other brain disorders,” said NIMH Director Thomas R. Insel, M.D.
  • Among key findings in the prefrontal cortex:Individual genetic variations are profoundly linked to expression patterns. The most similarity across individuals is detected early in development and again as we approach the end of life.Different types of related genes are expressed during prenatal development, infancy, and childhood, so that each of these stages shows a relatively distinct transcriptional identity. Three-fourths of genes reverse their direction of expression after birth, with most switching from on to off.Expression of genes involved in cell division declines prenatally and in infancy, while expression of genes important for making synapses, or connections between brain cells, increases. In contrast, genes required for neuronal projections decline after birth – likely as unused connections are pruned.By the time we reach our 50s, overall gene expression begins to increase, mirroring the sharp reversal of fetal expression changes that occur in infancy.Genetic variation in the genome as a whole showed no effect on variation in the transcriptome as a whole, despite how genetically distant individuals might be. Hence, human cortexes have a consistent molecular architecture, despite our diversity.
  • Among key findings:Over 90 percent of the genes expressed in the brain are differentially regulated across brain regions and/or over developmental time periods. There are also widespread differences across region and time periods in the combination of a gene’s exons that are expressed.Timing and location are far more influential in regulating gene expression than gender, ethnicity or individual variation.Among 29 modules of co-expressed genes identified, each had distinct expression patterns and represented different biological processes. Genetic variation in some of the most well-connected genes in these modules, called hub genes, has previously been linked to mental disorders, including schizophrenia and depression.Telltale similarities in expression profiles with genes previously implicated in schizophrenia and autism are providing leads to discovery of other genes potentially involved in those disorders.Sex differences in the risk for certain mental disorders may be traceable to transcriptional mechanisms. More than three-fourths of 159 genes expressed differentially between the sexes were male-biased, most prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Our brains are all made of the same stuff. Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, our prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture.
  • Males show more sex-biased gene expression. More genes differentially expressed (DEX) between the sexes were found in males than females, especially prenatally. Some genes found to have such sex-biased expression had previously been associated with disorders that affect males more than females, such as schizophrenia, Williams syndrome, and autism.
  • Tero Toivanen on 30 Oct 11
     
    Our brains are all made of the same stuff. Despite individual and ethnic genetic diversity, our prefrontal cortex shows a consistent molecular architecture. 
Tero Toivanen

Autism finding could lead to simple urine test for the condition - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news194764448.html

autism urine test research bacteria guts gut bacteria gastrointestinal

shared by Tero Toivanen on 03 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The researchers behind the study, from Imperial College London and the University of South Australia, suggest that their findings could ultimately lead to a simple urine test to determine whether or not a young child has autism.
  • People with autism are also known to suffer from gastrointestinal disorders and they have a different makeup of bacteria in their guts from non-autistic people.
  • Today's research shows that it is possible to distinguish between autistic and non-autistic children by looking at the by-products of gut bacteria and the body's metabolic processes in the children's urine. The exact biological significance of gastrointestinal disorders in the development of autism is unknown.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The distinctive urinary metabolic fingerprint for autism identified in today's study could form the basis of a non-invasive test that might help diagnose autism earlier. This would enable autistic children to receive assistance, such as advanced behavioural therapy, earlier in their development than is currently possible.
  • The researchers suggest that their new understanding of the makeup of bacteria in autistic children's guts could also help scientists to develop treatments to tackle autistic people's gastrointestinal problems.
  • Professor Jeremy Nicholson, the corresponding author of the study, who is the Head of the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial College London, said: "Autism is a condition that affects a person's social skills, so at first it might seem strange that there's a relationship between autism and what's happening in someone's gut. However, your metabolism and the makeup of your gut bacteria reflect all sorts of things, including your lifestyle and your genes. Autism affects many different parts of a person's system and our study shows that you can see how it disrupts their system by looking at their metabolism and their gut bacteria.
  • We hope our findings might be the first step towards creating a simple urine test to diagnose autism at a really young age
  • A urine test might enable professionals to quickly identify children with autism and help them early on," he added.
  • The researchers reached their conclusions by using H NMR Spectroscopy to analyse the urine of three groups of children aged between 3 and 9: 39 children who had previously been diagnosed with autism, 28 non-autistic siblings of children with autism, and 34 children who did not have autism who did not have an autistic sibling. They found that each of the three groups had a distinct chemical fingerprint. Non-autistic children with autistic siblings had a different chemical fingerprint than those without any autistic siblings, and autistic children had a different chemical fingerprint than the other two groups.
  • Tero Toivanen on 03 Jun 10
     
    This is interesting finding. Hope it will give results!
Tero Toivanen

Autistic Aphorisms: Enhanced Perception in Savant Syndrome - 0 views

autisticaphorisms.blogspot.com/...eption-in-savant-syndrome.html

autism savant perception structure creativityn patterns syndrome

shared by Tero Toivanen on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Mottron team did not shy away from suggesting that the features of savant syndrome could serve as an entryway into understanding all forms of autistic perception and cognition, savant like or not. This effectively removed savant syndrome from being the freak sideshow of autism and elevated it to the status of being a key element for understanding the condition.
  • it is orientation towards structure and pattern that determines the essential characteristics of autistic perception and cognition.
  • Not weak central coherence. Not damaged executive functioning. Not a missing theory of mind. Not a masculinized brain. Orientation to pattern and structure is the key to understanding autistic perception—an approach that is productive towards autistic interests and abilities, not destructive, as is the case for nearly every other competing theory. The Mottron team's emphasis on pattern-oriented perception in autistic individuals is a helpful step forward in understanding autistic individuals as they truly are.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • all the success stories related inside the pages of EPSS are accompanied by fortuitous exposure to various forms of structured material, clearly marking out the most promising path for autistic development and growth.
  • And of course these discussions fly in the face of the current clamor for early intervention in autism, where it would seem the goal is always to yank the autistic child away as early as possible from his or her preferred method of engaging the world, and substitute instead an intense bombardment of socially based indoctrination, hoping to turn the child around while there is still time for the “malleable” brain to be re-molded.
  • In my opinion, it is no mere coincidence that the very same elements that stand at the core of the Mottron team's affirmative description of autistic perception and cognition are also the very same elements that stand at the core of humanity’s sudden departure off the savannah and leap into the modern world.
  • Admittedly, a thorough discussion of such a topic would be much too large for inclusion in an academic research paper such as EPSS, but the fact that the Mottron team does not mention, or even hint at, the connection between the features of autistic perception and the features of human cognitive history leave it unclear whether the team has ever considered such a connection.
  • At this point in time, the Mottron team seems to be the only autism research team heading in a positive and enlightening direction—a direction that is constructive for autistic individuals everywhere—and I look forward to all their future contributions.
Tero Toivanen

Auditory Integration Training and Facilitated Communication for Autism -- Committee on ... - 0 views

aappolicy.aappublications.org/...431

AIT FC Auditoy Integration Training Facilitated Communication autism

shared by Tero Toivanen on 22 May 09 - Cached
  • For example, Smith et al16 studied 10 individuals with autism specifically to investigate the effects of facilitator influence and level of assistance on the results of FC. Each subject had six sessions, two with no help, two with partial assistance, and two with full assistance. Results showed that there were no cases of correct responses from the subject unless the facilitator knew the correct response. In addition, numerous responses were typed by the subjects to stimuli that were shown only to the facilitator, and not the subject. Similar results have been found by Regal et al17 and Eberlin et al.1
  • One complication of the use of FC has been the allegation of abuse, particularly sexual abuse, that has been obtained from individuals through the use of FC against third persons. This has generated adverse publicity and caused severely negative consequences for families who may be unsure of the validity of the allegations. Because of legal mandates regarding reports of child abuse, this becomes a critical issue for teachers and pediatricians alike, who may find the credibility of the report highly questionable but are obligated to fulfill their legal responsibilities. Margolin20 notes that although more than 50 such allegations have resulted in legal proceedings, most have terminated before trial. The ethical dilemmas posed by FC for practitioners have been reviewed by Jacobson et al.8
  • It is important for the pediatrician to obtain current data on both AIT and FC as they become available. Until further information is available, the use of these treatments does not appear warranted at this time, except within research protocols.
  • Tero Toivanen on 22 May 09
     
    This statement reviews the basis for two new therapies for autism---auditory integration training and facilitative communication. Both therapies seek to improve communication skills. Currently available information does not support the claims of proponents that these treatments are efficacious. Their use does not appear warranted at this time, except within research protocols.
Tero Toivanen

New study confirms link between advanced maternal age and autism - 4 views

www.physorg.com/news184848483.html

autism maternal age risk research

shared by Tero Toivanen on 09 Feb 10 - Cached
  • Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers.
  • The researchers note that understanding the relationship between increased parental age and autism risk is critical to understanding its biological causes. Earlier studies have observed that advanced maternal age is a risk factor for a variety of other birth-related conditions, including infertility, early fetal loss, low birth-weight, chromosomal aberrations and congenital anomalies.
  • One possible clue comes from a 2008 UC Davis study that found some mothers of children with autism had antibodies to fetal brain protein, while none of the mothers of typical children did. Advancing age has been associated with an increase in autoantibody production.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • They added that some persistent environmental chemicals accumulate in the body and also may have a role to play in autism, possibly contributing to the apparent effect of parental age.
  • The study also suggests that epigenetic changes over time "may enable an older parent to transfer a multitude of molecular functional alterations to a child ... thus epigenetics may be involved in the risks contributed by advancing parental age as a result of changes induced by stresses from environmental chemicals, co-morbidity or assistive reproductive therapy."
  • Tero Toivanen on 09 Feb 10
     
    Advanced maternal age is linked to a significantly elevated risk of having a child with autism, regardless of the father's age, according to an exhaustive study of all births in California during the 1990s by UC Davis Health System researchers.
Tero Toivanen

Autism Research Blog: Translating Autism: Amygdala, autism and clinical impairment: Whe... - 0 views

www.translatingautism.com/...m-and-clinical-impairment.html

amygdala autism high functioning autism Asperger's Disorder asperger

shared by Tero Toivanen on 03 Mar 09 - No Cached
  • The amygala serves a critical function in emotion recognition and processing, and thus it has been implicated in the neurophysiology of autism. For example, individuals with autism have been found to display atypical amygdala growth processes from childhood into adolescence (see for example Nacewiz et al., 2006. Archives of General Psychiatry, 63,12).
  • The Amygdale's bilateral biochemical functioning was obtained via magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Four metabolites were measured: N-acetyl aspartate (NAA), creatine/Phosphocreatine (Cre), choline (Cho), and myoinositol (ml).
  • The authors did not find any differences in the concentrations of any of the metabolites when comparing the HFA and the control groups
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • However, among the individuals with HFA, NAA was significantly associated with communication impairments, as measured by the ADI. In addition, Cre and NAA were associated with restrictive interests, and Cre alone was associated with social difficulties. The results therefore, indicate that those with the lowest concentrations of these metabolites tended to have more severe clinical symptoms as reported by the ADI.
  • The results of this study provide support for the need to conduct examinations that go beyond simple group comparisons.
  • key metabolites, while observed at normative levels, play a key role in the clinical presentation of the disorder.
  • presence of normative functioning in a particular domain or brain process (when compared to typical peers) does not necessarily indicate that such domain is not implicated in the phenomenology of the condition.
  • Tero Toivanen on 03 Mar 09
     
    Amygdala, autism and clinical impairment: When group comparisons are not enough. The results of this study provide support for the need to conduct examinations that go beyond simple group comparisons. In this case, the authors found no differences in any of the metabolites between the two groups, which could easily lead one to conclude that such metabolites may not play a role in autism. Yet, the results were strong in indicating that key metabolites, while observed at normative levels, play a key role in the clinical presentation of the disorder.
Tero Toivanen

Autism and early oxygen deprivation | On the Brain by Dr. Mike Merzenich,Ph.D. - 0 views

merzenich.positscience.com/?p=181

autism umbilical cord oxygen deprivation

shared by Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09 - Cached
  • we had dismissed perinatal anoxia as a likely factor contributing to autism’s apparent rise because we could not see how ITS incidence could be growing over the past several decades.
  • it has recently been argued that the especially high susceptibility of the highly metabolically active auditory brainstem to brief periods of anoxia that we and others have documented comes into play in the few to many tens of seconds of oxygen starvation that can stem from very rapid umbilical cord clamping— practices for which have changed (more rapid clamping has been adopted) over the past several decades.
  • earlier clamping of the umbilical cord became the standard of care world-wide beginning in the mid 1980’s, i.e., corresponding to the epoch in which scientists and educators began to first recognize an increase in autism incidence.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Why change an age-old practice invited by Mother Nature or the Creator of the Universe, when it is so obviously a product of 80 million years of natural selection?! Why race to get that clamp on the umbilical cord well before blood flow in the cord stopped on its own?
  • Interestingly, the obstetrics profession itself seems to be questioning the adoption of use of early-clamping procedures, as several important meta-analyses have now shown that late cord clamping (after the umbilical flow has stopped on its own = Nature’s Way) is (big surprise) beneficial to the newborn, with significant positive benefits for late (more natural) cord clamping recorded (in ferritin, which translates to hemoglobin which translates to oxygenation) up to 6 months later (e.g., see Hutton & Hassan, JAMA 297:1241).
  • It shall be interesting to see whether or not changes in these practices back to the “old way” results in a reduction in autism incidence. Stay tuned — because it looks like the experiment is now underway!
  • Tero Toivanen on 04 Jun 09
     
    Earlier clamping of the umbilical cord became the standard of care world-wide beginning in the mid 1980's, i.e., corresponding to the epoch in which scientists and educators began to first recognize an increase in autism incidence.
1 - 20 of 226 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page