Autism's early child | Society | The Observer. In a sunlit garden in Dorset, a middle-aged man is looking at photographs of his life. He pauses on a family group beside a caravan, a faded black-and-white snap stained with streaks of tea, and gently touches his forefinger to the face of a woman, pretty but careworn. She is in her 30s, with her arms around two boys. He says, "Mummy. " He moves his finger to the man in the group, a stiff-backed, hawk-nosed figure in a suit and Homburg hat: "Grandad!
" He flips to the next photo and grins broadly: "Daddy Edge! " The man in the picture, seated on a sea wall, is grinning, too — their faces look almost identical. The man turns to the next picture and taps it with his forefinger, twice, as though he has remembered someone who, long ago, had been very important to him. Michael is a remarkable man. "Child psychotics" were generally placed in institutions before their sixth birthdays. The hospital's consultant child psychiatrist was Kenneth Soddy, an expert with 30 years' experience. By The Numbers: Autism Is Not a Math Problem. We are not all on the spectrum now | Sandy Starr.
This is the text of a speech that was given at the conference ‘Autism, Ethics and the Good Life’, held at the Royal Society in London on 2 April 2012 (World Autism Awareness Day). Is autism a disorder? Is autism an identity? If you had asked me these questions a few years ago, before I became involved with the Autism Ethics Group at King’s College London, then my answer would have been a clear ‘yes’ and ‘no’ respectively. Clearly, autism is most usefully understood as a disorder. And clearly, it is not useful to understand autism as an identity.
If you were to ask me the same two questions today, then I would say exactly the same thing. My involvement in the Autism Ethics Group hasn’t changed my views in that respect. I am interested in autism for three main reasons: I think it’s fair to say that from any of these three perspectives, the notion that autism is not a disorder would once have seemed bizarre. For one thing, a disorder implies a lack of normal or typical function. Test Drug Eases Behavioral Symptoms Seen In Autism. Mapping the language minefield for kids with autism - opinion - 02 April 2012. Going bananas. Laughing your head off. Phrases that aren't literally true make no sense if you have autism, like Michael Barton Why do people with autism, like yourself, find the English language so confusing? Autistic people think in black and white and therefore interpret everything literally. Tell me about the time your teacher told you to "pull your socks up".I bent down and did just that.
What if you saw a sign saying "Passengers are to remain seated at all times"? What goes through your mind when you hear expressions like "It cost him an arm and a leg? " Is this what prompted you to write your book, It's Raining Cats and Dogs: An autism spectrum guide to the confusing world of idioms, metaphors and everyday expressions ? You say that the only times people speak to you in a clear and concise way are during mathematics and physics lectures, and when you travel to a foreign country.Communicating science concepts is easy – everyone speaks the same language. Profile More From New Scientist. Searching for the Onset of Autism. Diffusion tensor image shows white matter pathways in infant at risk for autism. Warmer colors represent higher fractional anisotropy, a measure of white-matter organization. (Credit: Image created by Jason Wolff, University of North Carolina.)
Early behavioral intervention has shown some promise as a way to help children with autism. But it’s difficult to see the hallmarks of autism before two years of age with today’s diagnostic criteria. Could we find other methods? Seeking to answer that question is Jed Elison at the California Institute of Technology, who is working with Ralph Adolphs at Caltech and Joe Piven at the University of North Carolina among other colleagues around the U.S. and Canada.
Today’s criteria, from the psychiatric bible called the DSM-IV, include attributes of social impairments, communication deficits, and repetitive patterns of behavior and restricted interests (either in intensity or content). What about behavioral differences? Scientists and autism: When geeks meet. Fever In Pregnancy Linked To Autism. Discovering Autism: Unraveling an epidemic. By Alan Zarembo, Los Angeles Times December 11, 2011 First of four parts Amber Dias couldn't be sure what was wrong with her little boy. Chase was a bright, loving 2 1/2-year-old. But he didn't talk much and rarely responded to his own name. He hated crowds and had a strange fascination with the underside of the family tractor. Searching the Internet, Amber found stories about other children like Chase — on websites devoted to autism. “He wasn't the kid rocking in the corner, but it was just enough to scare me,” recalled Dias, who lives with her husband and three children on a dairy farm in the Central Valley town of Kingsburg.
She took Chase to a psychologist in Los Angeles, who said the boy indeed had autism and urged the family to seek immediate treatment. But a team at the Fresno agency that arranges state-funded services for autism said Chase didn't have the disorder. Unconvinced, Dias imagined the worst — that Chase would never have a girlfriend, a job, a place of his own. The U.S. Dr. Childhood Vaccines Cleared of Autism, Diabetes Link in New Report.
From Nature magazine Vaccines are largely safe, and do not cause autism or diabetes, the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) said in a report issued today. This conclusion followed a review of more than 1,000 published research studies. "We looked very hard and found very little evidence of serious adverse harms from vaccines," says Ellen Wright Clayton, chairwoman of the reporting committee and director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. "The message I would want parents to have is one of reassurance. " The report, commissioned in 2009 by the US Health Resources and Services Administration, covers the eight vaccines that comprise the majority of claims filed with the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP), which compensates people for adverse health effects from any of 11 vaccines.
The report also includes less-convincing evidence of links between four other adverse events and particular vaccines. Jumping Genes in the Brain Are Tied to Autism [Video] Stretches of DNA that move around the brain, colloquially known as jumping genes, may play a role in fostering one pernicious form of autism. It has long been known that a a mutation that switches off a gene called MECP2 is involved in Rett syndrome, the most physically disabling form of autism. Rett, which mostly affects girls, results in speech and motor defects that appear just after children learn to speak their first words and start walking. In the Nov. 18, 2010, Nature, Alyson Muotri, Fred Gage and Carol Marchetto found that jumping genes, more formally known as LINE-1 retrotransposons, may help explain why a single mutation may cause a diverse panoply of symptoms.
When the mutation disables the gene, it causes the jumping genetic elements to move around human stem cells six times more than they do in normal (wild type) cells. Source: Carol Marchetto and Alysson Muotri with permission from Nature. Autism Signs Appear in Brains of 6-Month-Old Infants. The early signs of autism are visible in the brains of 6-month-old infants, a new study finds, suggesting that future treatments could be given at this time, to lessen the impact of the disorder on children.
Researchers looked at how the brain develops in early life, and found that tracts of white matter that connect different regions of the brain didn't form as quickly in children who later developed autism, compared with kids who didn't develop the disorder. "The way the wiring was changing was dampened" in the children with autism, said study researcher Jason Wolff, who studies developmental disabilities at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "It was a more blunted change over time, in how the brain was being wired," In contrast, in the brains of infants who did not later develop autism, white matter tracts were swiftly forming, Wolff said.
"Their brains were organizing themselves in a pretty rapid fashion. " A crucial time What's causing the brain differences? The Ballooning Brain: Defective Genes May Explain Uncontrolled Brain Growth in Autism. As a baby grows inside the womb, its brain does not simply expand like a dehydrated sponge dropped in water. Early brain development is an elaborate procession. Every minute some 250,000 neurons bloom, squirming past one another like so many schoolchildren rushing to their seats at the sound of the bell.
Each neuron grows a long root at one end and a crown of branches at the other, linking itself to fellow cells near and far. By the end of the second trimester, neurons in the baby's brain have formed trillions of connections, many of which will not survive into adulthood—the least traveled paths will eventually wither. Sometimes, the developing brain blunders, resulting in "neuro-developmental disorders," such as autism. But exactly why or how early cellular mistakes cause autism has eluded medical science. Since 1998 Courchesne has been searching autistic brains for unusual structural features. Should we rewrite the autism rule book? - opinion - 15 March 2012. Big changes are proposed for the way autism is diagnosed.
Two leading experts argue for and against the suggested redefinition Fred Volkmar AN EFFORT is under way to update the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic guide - the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). In particular, changes suggested for diagnosis of autism are the focus of much debate. There are clear reasons for changing and tweaking DSM categories and criteria in the light of new research, but the impact in this case is likely to be major.
The current DSM-IV definition of autism was based on results from a large, grant-funded, collaborative study which I led in 1994 involving nearly 1000 cases (American Journal of Psychiatry, vol 151, p 1361). It was meant to provide a balance of coverage over different ages and IQs, to be useful for both clinical work and research, and converged with the World Health Organization's definition of autism.
We would not oversell our findings. Francesca Happé. Jonah Lehrer on New Research About Autistics. Autism Rates Rise Again. Increased autism rates crush vaccine hypothesis - health - 05 April 2012. CLAIMS that autism is caused by vaccines containing thiomersal have been floored by increasing rates of autism in children not exposed to the chemical. No link has been found between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a mercury-containing compound known as thiomersal that is used in some vaccines. Nevertheless, since 2000, thiomersal has been phased out of most paediatric vaccines in the US.
Now a report published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, despite this, the prevalence of ASD has continued to grow. The data, from 13 areas in the US, reveal that in 2008, 11.4 kids aged eight per 1000 had an ASD compared with 6.4 per 1000 in 2002 - a 78 per cent increase. "Increases are likely to reflect better awareness of the condition," says Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, UK. New Scientist Not just a website! More From New Scientist One Per Cent (New Scientist) Laser-sparked fusion power passes key milestone (New Scientist)
Autism Linked To Obesity In Pregnancy. Testosterone On My Mind And In My Brain. Introduction by John Brockman "I thoroughly enjoyed the evening last week," emailed Brian Eno. "A lot of interesting people got connected together and everyone told me they enjoyed themselves. " He was referring the first-ever London Edge Reality Club meeting, featuring a presentation by Cambridge research psychologist Simon-Baron Cohen which Eno hosted at his studio in Notting Hill before an assembled group that included artists, curators, museum directors, writers, playwrights, scientists in fields such as biology, math, psychology, zoology, the editors and correspondents of Nature, The Economist, Wired, The Guardian.
Baron-Cohen held forth before this diverse group on his latest research on the properties and effects of the hormone testosterone, while showing its relevance to his earlier research in sex differences and autism. Eno, Edge, Bono, Pavarotti - Miss Sarajevo | One HD Perhaps this should be your new Reality Club venue outside America? " Now we're up to testosterone.