Help With Autism

Think back to the time when you were first taught pronouns. What do you mean you don’t know? Actually, that’s a perfectly natural response. The average person simply learns pronouns by absorbing language as a child and from that point forward inherently knows which pronoun to use without giving it much thought. Autistic individuals, on the other hand, often confuse pronouns.

While browsing for articles on autism, I learned that a team of scientists have discovered that the difficulty in pronoun choice for autistics reflects a disordered neural representation of the self that are processed in the frontal and posterior of the brain. The researchers used fMRI to compare brain activation pattern and synchronization of activation across brain areas in high functioning autistic, and compared those results to a control group. The full study can be found in the journal Brain.

If a product seems too good to be true, it probably is. Case in point: the Food and Drug Administration announced that Howard Sousa of the Artery Health Institute LLC has agreed not to market his Advanced Formula EDTA Oral Chelation capsules as a drug. In other words, the manufacturer can no longer promise that its products cure or prevent diseases.

As part of the agreement struck with the FDA, Sousa will use an outside expert to review claims he makes about his products. Steep fines will be levied against him if he fails to comply. This is a warning for all parents to research the chelation products they buy. Look for multiple reliable references that back claims made by manufacturers and sellers.

A study that examined twins found that environmental factors may be as important as genes when it comes to identifying what causes autism. Researchers did not identify specific environmental factors, but experts agree that this study sheds light on factors outside of genetics. The researchers looked at 192 pairs of identical and fraternal twins. In each pairing, one twin displayed classic symptoms of Autism and the other had Autism spectrum disorder, like Asperger’s syndrome.

Autism research concerning twins is important because identical twins share 100 percent of their genes and fraternal twins share 50 percent. This set up a clear control: if all the genetic material is the same, why does one twin develop more “severe” autism than the other? Mathematical modeling suggests that only 38 percent of the instances of autism studied in the twins can be attributed to genetics, meaning that there is a high likelihood of environmental factors as the root cause.

Since there is no cure for autism as of today, there is a lot of research for autism going on. There are a lot of foundations that are out there as well that help with the research. OAR is one foundation that helps with bridging the gap that may be left out in other researches. This non profit organization was established in 2001, and is still going strong today.

Autism research deals with the causes, treatment, and prevention of autism. It also helps parents to learn how to deal with living with the disorder. Throughout the United States there are a lot of non profit as well as universities that solely based on autism research. Research will continue, until there is a cure.

There was good news this past week in the world of autism research. White Castle System Inc. CEO Bill Ingram and his wife Marci announced a $10 million pledge for autism research to be conducted through The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital. Ohio State said it would be one of the largest funds dedicated to studying autism spectrum disorder.

This year $1 million in grants will be made available to researchers. The Ingram’s have included part of the pledge in their wills. The Ingram’s have a son with autism so they know first hand the need for funding for autism research. The Ohio State University has ongoing studies that include animal studies of pollutant exposure during pregnancy, genetic research, and clinical trials testing a method of parent-and-child training to reduce irritable behavior.

Autism often develops early in children, but the trouble is that it is difficult to detect. Until children begin to communicate and interact with people and their environment, finding early indicators of the disorder is largely a guessing game. But new autism research from the Kennedy Krieger Institute shows that an infant’s gaze could be one of the earliest indicators of autism.

According to the study, infrequent or erratic staring is an indication that an infant is at a higher risk of autism. During the study, the researchers also tested for cause and effect learning skills, which they found to be consistent between both high- and low-risk infants. The study was conducted using 25 infants who have siblings with autism and 25 who have no family history of the disorder. A child is considered “high-risk” for the disorder if they have at least one sibling with autism, as they are 25 times more likely to develop it themselves.

In our last post we discussed a new finding that suggests there may be a common genetic link for those with autism. A new study released today adds more fuel to that hypothesis, as researchers found that the closest relatives of those with autism often move their eyes in subtly different ways. These differences are so minimal the people themselves won’t even notice them. But when observed in a lab, the differences are discernible.

This commonality among people with autism and their relatives is further evidence that genetics and heredity are causes of autism. Mathew Mosconi, a scientist who worked on the study, says that by studying eye movements scientists may be able to determine which specific systems the disorder is affecting. Eventually, the researchers hope to use the findings to develop new autism treatments.

As we’ve said before, autism is a polarizing topic because it seems like new two cases are quite the same. Treatments that help some do nothing for others, and there are always myriad culprits to point out as the origin of the disorder. Because of the massive amount of ambiguity circling around both the causes and treatments of the disease, it’s literally impossible to come to a consensus about anything. But people have a hard time disputing science, and new autism research of the DNA of children with autism may be able to finally give us a bedrock on which to build further discussion.

Last month, an extensive study from a diverse team of international researchers was published in the journal Nature. The scientists found that the patients with autism had more mutations in certain segments of their DNA than unaffected individuals. Although the mutations were different in each patient, they were there in the same segments of DNA. These findings explain why there is a spectrum of disorders with similar yet inconsistent symptoms and offer a new catalyst for treatments.

Identifying autism early is essential to treating the disorder and providing help and resources to those parenting a child with autism. As such, scientists are always looking for early indicators of autism. The baby babble, which we all find so adorable, could actually be one of these crucial indicators. Researchers have created a program that they believe could help identify autism in toddlers by differentiating the speech of toddlers with autism and those without.

For the study, researchers place a small voice recorder in the pocket of over 200 young children, recording 12 hours of audio per day for six to eight days. Autistic children generally form jumbled syllables for a longer period than other children do, and the software works to identify these anomalies. Preliminary research found the software to be correct in 85 percent of its identifications.