A hallmark of human nature is the ability to share information and to comprehend the thoughts and intentions of others. This capability involves social cognition (the cognitive processes involved in social interaction) and makes a significant contribution to the foundations for language development, as well as social competence. It also sets us apart from other primates.
A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study on the relationship between mercury (thimerosal) in vaccines and children’s brain functioning draws a misleading conclusion, says one of the study’s external consultants, Sallie Bernard, Executive Director of SafeMinds.
Hallmarks of autism are characteristic behaviors — repetitive motions, problems interacting with others, impaired communication abilities — that occur in widely different combinations and degrees of severity among those who have the condition.
The Simons Foundation, through its Autism Research Initiative, has signed a $7.8 million, two-year contract with the Rutgers University Cell and DNA Repository (RUCDR) to establish a collection of DNA samples for autism studies. The samples will be collected from 2,000 families that have a single autistic child.
Ineffective or even dangerous fad treatments for autism, always a problem, seem to be growing more pervasive, according to researchers who studied the problem.
It’s the things a young child doesn’t do that may give the clues to the presence of Autism. Because early symptoms of Autism are often characterised by an absence of normal behavioural development rather than the presence of unusual behaviour, diagnosis and early intervention can be crucially delayed.
One of six Autism Centers of Excellence (ACE) in the country has been established at the University of California, San Diego by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to be directed by Eric Courchesne, Ph.D., professor of neurosciences at the UC San Diego School of Medicine and a leading expert on brain abnormalities associated with autism, a brain disorder affecting an estimated two million people in the U.S. The symptoms are impaired social, emotional, language and cognitive development.
Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as ?low functioning? or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do. Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities?uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example?their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit. They often earn a dubious promotion to ?idiot savant.?
A study published in the August issue of the journal Brain demonstrates, for the first time, an association between increased white matter volume and functional impairment in children with autism.
Tessa and Mike Zertuche, owners of AllGood Driving School and parents of two sons with autism, are donating proceeds from their online driver education course enrollments to the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute.