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Children with autism show increased reaction time and unique brain wave patters during tasks that include novel distracters.

Children with autism show increased reaction time and unique brain wave patters during tasks that include novel distracters.

The participants completed an Odd-Ball task. In this task, the participants are asked to press a key when they see the target letter ( "X" ) on a computer screen. This target letter is presented 25% of the trials. For 50% of the trials a common distracter (the letter "O") is presented instead. For the remaining 25%, a set of novel distracters are presented (different symbols). The researchers recorded the reaction time, accuracy, and brain electrical functioning during the task.

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

Since most of the ways we diagnose autism are based on behavior, we can't rely on biological, structural, or chemical findings to determine if a treatment is working. We primarily measure success based on a patient's change, or lack thereof, in behavior.

The behavioral changes produced by the few effective treatments make life in social settings (including the home) possible, but we have no idea whether they have any effect on the underlying cause (or causes) of autism or whether they even make severely affected patients feel better.

One method intended to help, "facilitated communication," is based on the idea that a sensitive facilitator will hold the hand of a patient over a kind of Ouija board. She will then help the patient respond to questions by sensing his intention and helping guide his hand to spell out answers. Rigorous studies have shown that the spelled-out answers come from the unconscious (or, worse, the conscious) mind of the facilitator. Nonetheless, the practice is still in use, and I know parents who are utterly convinced that it is valid and useful. Frankly, something important did happen when facilitated communication was introduced to my patients: They improved, they brightened, they became more social and more interactive, and they seemed, somehow, happier, even though facilitated communication didn't actually translate their thoughts into words. I'll come back to "why" in a minute.

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.

If you give girls and boys language tasks, most girls will process the information in the same way (in a specialized language area)

help them with word storage and retrieval

But for boys, sensitivity to the modality of how words are presented means that an extra steps need to be taken to match words that are picked up by listening and words that are read on the printed page. No wonder dyslexia is much more common in boys - the separate system means that the sight and sound of words are learned as distinct processes.

Childhood Disintegrative Disorder This rather rare condition was described many years before autism (Heller, 1908) but has only recently been 'officially' recognized.

The condition develops in children who have previously seemed perfectly normal. Typically language, interest in the social environment, and often toileting and self-care abilities are lost, and there may be a general loss of interest in the environment. The child usually comes to look very 'autistic', i.e., the clinical presentation (but not the history) is then typical of a child with autism.

A special educator in Vienna, Theodore Heller, proposed the term dementia infantilis to account for the condition.

The American Psychological Association has issued a position paper on FC, stating that "Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that facilitated communication is not a scientifically valid technique for individuals with autism or mental retardation" and describing FC as "a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy."

Frontline Program on facilitated communication:

Parents are grateful to discover that their child is not hopelessly retarded but is either normal or above normal in intelligence. FC allows their children to demonstrate their intelligence; it provides them with a vehicle heretofore denied them.

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.

What this means is that there is likely to be a complex set of many factors that contribute to ASD - not one single cause.

The same exact situation is true for other entities, like schizophrenia and attention deficit disorder (ADD).

One difference, however, is that schizophrenia and ADD likely represent changes to particular parts of the brain, while autism is likely due to changes in the global architecture of the brain.