Autism gives many unique traits to an individual, and many of these people go on to do great things (it is said Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Bill Gates, and other innovators and scientists had forms of autism). I can’t speak for others - maybe they do want to rid themselves of their condition. But as for the parents and individuals making the decision, think about it: do you honestly want a cure that is going to change the individual you are?

So he went out on his own and launched Specialisterne, a Copenhagen-based software-testing firm that now has 51 employees, including 37 with autism, and revenues of $2 million.

Most of our consultants with autism have a mild form called Asperger’s and are high functioning.

I think normality is whatever the majority decides it will be, and in our company people with autism are the norm.

Low levels of a stress hormone may be responsible for the obsession with routine and dislike for new experiences common in children with a certain type of autism.

The body produces cortisol, among other hormones, in stressful situations. Cortisol increases blood pressure and blood sugar levels, among other duties, to signal the body's need to adapt to changes occurring around it.

People with Asperger syndrome notably have very repetitive or narrow patterns of thought and behavior, such as being obsessed with either a single object or topic. Though tending to become experts in this limited domain, they have otherwise very limited social skills, according to the study.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) tend to stare at people's mouths rather than their eyes. Now, an NIH-funded study in 2-year-olds with the social deficit disorder suggests why they might find mouths so attractive: lip-sync—the exact match of lip motion and speech sound.

Such audiovisual synchrony preoccupied toddlers who have autism, while their unaffected peers focused on socially meaningful movements of the human body, such as gestures and facial expressions.

"Typically developing children pay special attention to human movement from very early in life, within days of being born. But in children with autism, even as old as two years, we saw no evidence of this," explained Ami Klin, Ph.D., of the Yale Child Study Center, who led the research. "Toddlers with autism are missing rich social information imparted by these cues, and this is likely to adversely affect the course of their development."

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.

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.

Given that the rate of elicited expressive communication in the present study is much lower than the suggested rate of teacher prompt, it can be assumed that teachers of students with autism do not actively promote their students’ expressive communication.

The results also indicate that verbal prompts and a combination of verbal prompts and modeling were the most commonly used instruction. However, simple (non-combined) prompts were most effective in eliciting a communicative response with kids with the most severe autism. But most surprisingly, physical prompts did not seem to be as effective as verbal prompts, which may also explain why verbal prompts were use significantly more by these teachers.

In sum, the study has implications for the type of techniques that are effective in eliciting communicative responses in children with severe autism. In this study simple verbal prompts and modeling were the most effective strategy to elicit communicative responses in these children.Chiang, H. (2009). Naturalistic observations of elicited expressive communication of children with autism: An analysis of teacher instructions Autism, 13 (2), 165-178 DOI: 10.1177/1362361308098513

The NLP became synonymous with motivation and motivation is pivotal in teaching children with autism to respond to multiple questions.

1988 was the first time the word pivotal was used to describe this method. It was referred to previously as the NLP. It is considered a behavior intervention with similarities to the Lovaas method/ABA. 

Why would you say PRT is more effective than other therapies

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.

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.

1) Children have the opportunity to make choices throughout the teaching session.

2) Alternating between mastered tasks and novel ones.

3) The child’s attempts are reinforced as are his/her accurate responses.

Current research into strategies for children with ASD indicates that the most efficient and effective interventions for these children include the following characteristics: (a) attention to student motivation, (b) teaching the student to respond to a variety of cues, (c) self-instruction procedures, and (d) teaching the student to learn through initiating to others (Koegel et al., 2001). These are known as pivotal areas of instruction for individuals with ASD and make up an approach called Pivotal Response Intervention (PRI).

Children with autism who received hyperbaric treatment at 1.3 atm and 24% oxygen for 40 hourly sessions had significant improvements in overall functioning, receptive language, social interaction, eye contact, and sensory/cognitive awareness compared to children who received slightly pressurized room air. Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov NCT00335790

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.

A new paper from Eric Fombonne is in electronic print at the journal Pediatric Research.

The title is ‘Epidemiology of pervasive developmental disorders’

Combining all these categories together Fombonne presents a prevalence of 60-70/10,000.

This includes autism - there are no compelling studies showing any benefit from hyperbaric oxygen therapy in autism. The few studies that do exist are uncontrolled, which means they are mostly worthless.

Some have pointed out that the study leader, Daniel Rossignol, has a potential conflict of interest in that he offers hyperbaric oxygen therapy in his practice.

Everyone agrees, even Rossignol, that this study will not end the controversy over hyperbaric oxygen in autism. It needs to be replicated.

A special education teacher (from Finland!  See comments below)

I couldn’t agree with you more–consistency across all environments is the key to success, and for that cooperation between school and home is crucial.