Fact Sheets Links

Fact Sheets Links

Autism Society:	Autism Society – Facts and Statistics
Autism Speaks:	Facts about Autism | Autism Speaks Frequently Asked Questions | Autism Speaks
National Autistic Society:	Some facts and statistics – | autism | Asperger syndrome
CDC:	CDC – Facts, Autism Spectrum Disorders CDC – Data and Statistics, Autism Spectrum Disorders

Special Autism Issues Links

Special Autism Issues Links
Nature News Special: The Autism Enigma
Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation: Autism Spectrum Disorders: Transition and Employment

News Wrap-up for July 24 — July 30

Social Acumen Equals Spatial Skills, Psychologist Finds
Study leader Dr. Amy Shelton John Hopkins University.	July 25, 2011 Baltimore, Maryland — People who are socially skilled – who are adept at metaphorically putting themselves in someone else’s shoes – are also more proficient when it comes to spatial skills, according to a new study led by a Johns Hopkins University psychologist. The study found that the more socially accomplished a person is, the easier it is for him or her to assume another person’s perspective (literally) on the world. “The results were striking: there was a profound difference in this ability among people with better social skills and those with weaker ones,” said study leader Amy Shelton, a professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. Shelton said that the study results could eventually lead to improved strategies to help people on the autism spectrum – notable for their lack of social awareness and skills – compensate for this weakness Continue reading.

Tablet as Therapy, The Big Play

Apple’s iPad. Courtesy Apple

July 26, 2011 New York, NY — In a report by the Wall Street Journal reports on several applications for use on touch-tablets or iPhones to help those with autism. Griffin Wajda, a 10-year-old boy, was drawing with a touchscreen tablet computer with his brother. They were using an interactive storytelling program designed to teach those with autism how to interact with others. The application came from Iowa researchers. Using another program called Photogoo designed to allow children to learn facial gestures/emotions, an 8-year-old autistic boy was manipulating a face. A third program developed by Amsterdam-based developer David Niemeije is called Proloquo2Go. It is a multitouch therapy-aiding application designed to help non-communicative people. The application speaks whatever symbols or sentences the user enters into their iPhone or iPad. Continue reading at the Wall Street Journal.

Social deficits associated with autism, schizophrenia induced in mice with new technology

Lab Mouse. Rama

July 27, 2011 Stanford, California — Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine have been able to switch on, and then switch off, social-behavior deficits in mice that resemble those seen in people with autism and schizophrenia, thanks to a technology that allows scientists to precisely manipulate nerve activity in the brain. In synchrony with this experimentally induced socially aberrant behavior, the mice exhibited a brain-wave pattern called gamma oscillation that has been associated with autism and schizophrenia in humans, the researchers say. Continue reading.

Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability

Tyler Perrachione. MIT

July 29, 2011 Boston, Massachusetts — Distinguishing between other people’s voices may seem like a trivial task. However, if those people are speaking a language you don’t understand, it becomes much harder. That’s because you rely on individuals’ differences in pronunciation to help identify them. If you don’t understand the words they are saying, you don’t pick up on those differences. That ability to process the relationship between sounds and their meanings, also known as phonology, is believed to be impaired in people with dyslexia. Therefore, neuroscientists at MIT theorized that people with dyslexia would find it much more difficult to identify speakers of their native language than non-dyslexic people. People with dyslexia had a much harder time recognizing voices than non-dyslexics. In fact, they fared just as poorly as they (and non-dyslexics) did when listening to speakers of a foreign language. Continue reading.

Links:

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Should social savvy equal good spatial skills? The interaction of social skills with spatial perspective taking. Nature: Neocortical excitation/inhibition balance in information processing and social dysfunction Science: Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability

News Wrap-up for July 17 — July 23

Variation in the human Cannabinoid Receptor (CNR1) gene modulates gaze duration for happy faces
Face with gaze duration From Chakrabarti and Baron-Cohen.	June 29, 2011 Cambridge, England — Babies look longer at happy faces and this early interest in positive emotional expressions is a potential driving force for them to socialize. This preference for happy faces is also seen in typical adults, who prefer to look longer at happy faces compared to those showing disgust. In contrast, people with autism look less at other people’s faces from an early age, and have difficulty in understanding facial expressions of emotion. One theory is that that this is because they do not find faces and other social stimuli rewarding. New research published today in the journal Molecular Autism has found that depending on which variations of the cannabinoid receptor (CNR1) gene a person carries influences the amount of time people look at happy faces. The CNR1 gene is involved in the brain’s reward circuitry (and gets its name because it codes for the molecule that cannabis attaches itself to) and expressed primarily in the regions of the brain involved in reward processing. Continue reading.

Synaptic Pruning by Microglia Is Necessary for Normal Brain Development

3-dimensional reconstruction of a single microglia cell. European Molecular Biology Laboratory

July 21, 2011 Monterotondo, Italy — Cells called microglia prune the connections between neurons, shaping how the brain is wired, scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, Italy, discovered. This has important implementation to developmental disorders like autism. “We’re very excited, because our data shows microglia are critical to get the connectivity right in the brain,” says Dr. Cornelius Gross, who led the work: “they ‘eat up’ synapses to make space for the most effective contacts between neurons to grow strong.”

Links:

Molecular Autism: Variation in the human Cannabinoid Receptor (CNR1) gene modulates gaze duration for happy faces Science: Synaptic Pruning by Microglia Is Necessary for Normal Brain Development

News Wrap-up for July 10 — July 16

A Meta-Analysis of Perinatal and Neonatal Risk Factors for Autism
Hannah Gardener, Sc.D., Research Assistant Professor of Pediatrics Harvard School of Public Health	July 11, 2011 Boston, Massachusetts — In a meta-analysis review article of 40 previous studies, researchers examined over 60 perinatal and neonatal factors that have been linked to the risk of autism later in life. Some suspected factors include low birth weight, anemia or jaundice in the newborn, birth injuries to the baby, multiple birth, maternal hemorrhaging during childbirth, fetal distress during labor, certain delivery complications like umbilical cord-problems (the cord being wrapped around the baby’s neck, for instance), or signs of “poor condition” in the newborn such as problems with breathing, heart rate, or muscle tone. The researchers conclude that there was “insufficient evidence to implicate any one perinatal or neonatal factor in autism etiology.”

A novel functional brain imaging endophenotype of autism

The brain showing the regions where activation difference were found between ‘unaffected’ siblings, controls, and ‘autism’ siblings. From Spencer, etc.

July 12, 2011 Cambridge, England — It has been known that siblings of individuals with autism have over 20 times the risk of autism than the population at large. The apparently “unaffected” siblings of autistic individuals are understood to “display subtle impairments in the cognitive domains characteristically affected by autism.” A University of Cambridge Autism Research Centre study published in Translational Psychiatry Journal shows “for the first time, that the neural response to facial expression of emotion differs between unaffected siblings and healthy controls with no family history of autism.” It should be noted that the responses in unaffected siblings and those with autism did not differ significantly. The findings suggest that an atypical implicit response to facial expression of emotion is “a clear biomarker of familial risk.”

Psychiatric comorbidity in young adults with a clinical diagnosis of Asperger syndrome

Tove Lugnegård, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist, PhD student Maria Unenge Halerbäck, Senior Consultant and Adolescent Psychiatrist, MD, PhD student University of Gothenburg

July 15, 2011 Gothenburg, Sweden — Swedish researchers Tove Lugnegård, Maria Unenge Hallerbäck, and Christopher Gillberg confirm in Research in Developmental Disabilities that depression and anxiety disorders are comorbid in young adults with Asperger syndrome. There were 54 participants (26 men and 28 women) with a mean age of 27. They all had a clinical diagnosis of Asperger syndrome. Results from the study found: 70% had experienced at least one episode of major depression and of those 50% had recurrent episodes 56% had one or more anxiety disorders (social anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, agoraphobia, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)) 17% met the criteria for some kind of psychotic disorder 11% had previous substance-induced disorder They conclude, “young adults with autism spectrum disorders are at high risk for mood and anxiety disorders.”

Links:

Pediatrics: Abstract Perinatal and Neonatal Risk Factors for Autism- A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Translational Psychiatry: A novel functional brain imaging endophenotype of autism- the neural response to facial expression of emotion Research in Developmental Disabilities: Psychiatric comorbidity in young adults with a clinical diagnosis of Asperger syndrome