A new study published by a team of psychologists suggests that the diagnosis of autism could be improved by considering the differences between how women and men experience and act upon their emotions.
In an Australian first, South Australia has appointed a new Assistant Minister for Autism, tasked to increase autism supports in public primary schools. This could not have come at a more urgent time as new research from the University of South Australia shows that parents world-wide report a lack of awareness and understanding of the unique learning needs of autistic children across all levels of mainstream school.
Measuring how the eyes’ pupils change in response to light—known as the pupillary light reflex—could potentially be used to screen for autism in young children, according to a study conducted at Washington State University.
In a series of articles published in the journal Nature Genetics, researchers used data from the SPARK (Simons Powering Autism Research) research cohort, which was created to advance our understanding of the complex genetics of autism and includes genetic data from nearly 43,000 people with autism.
According to the researchers, improving the perceptual capabilities of people with autism is a difficult challenge, requiring long and tedious training along with the difficulty that characterizes autism to generalize learning to other areas.
Despite a federal mandate requiring access to early intervention programs (EIP) for children with disabilities, fewer than half of autistic children in four New Jersey counties received services before 36 months of age, according to a Rutgers study.
Key takeaways:
• Just like the real thing. The stem cell–derived interneurons, which play a role in sensations like touch and pain, are indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts in the body.
• Tomorrow’s therapies. In addition to potential treatments for injury-related sensation loss, the discovery could lead to new methods for screening drugs for chronic pain.
• Moving forward. While stem cells from mice were used in the research, scientists are now working to replicate the findings with human cells.
People with neurodevelopmental disabilities are often not given the tools to create romantic relationships in a meaningful, safe way. This puts them at risk for sexual abuse. A new educational program, tested in partnership with the UC Davis MIND Institute, may help foster healthy, romantic relationships.
The UC Davis MIND Institute’s annual Summer Institute on Neurodevelopmental Disabilities is focused on strategies to support individuals with ADHD, Down syndrome, autism and more as they prepare for life after high school. The free, virtual event will take place Aug. 3 from 9:00 a.m. – 1:15 p.m. and is open to all.
Irvine, Calif., June 27, 2022 — Supported by a $20 million gift from Joe C. Wen and his family, the UCI Health outpatient clinical facility at the new UCI Health–Irvine complex will bring specialty clinical expertise closer to coastal and south Orange County residents on the UCI campus. “The Joe C. Wen & Family Center for Advanced Care at UCI Health–Irvine will play a special role in the life of south Orange County because of our unique ability to marshal all the resources of a comprehensive research university in support of delivering the best and most up-to-date care,” said UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman.
The reactivity of a mother’s autoantibodies to specific fetal brain protein patterns may predict the child’s diagnosis with a type of autism known as MAR ASD. MAR ASD was present in around 20% of kids with autism in Arkansas and Philadelphia samples and was linked to more significant autistic traits.
In the first study of its kind, researchers found that recordings from the retina could identify distinct signals for both Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) providing a potential biomarker for each condition.
Background: Social media provide a window onto the circulation of ideas in everyday folk psychiatry, revealing the themes and issues discussed both by the public and by various scientific communities. Objective: This...
Fentanyl, a mu-opioid receptor agonist, is one of the most commonly used analgesics in the hospital and may induce long-lasting behavioral and somatosensory impairment in rodents.
Analyzing brain stem cells of patients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Rutgers scientists have found evidence of irregularities in very early brain development that may contribute to the neuropsychiatric disorder.
Differences in behavior among people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are closely related to differences in neuroanatomy – the shape of a brain – a team of Boston College neuroscientists report today in the journal Science. This discovery could help to understand the causes of ASD, and to develop personalized interventions.
UC San Diego researchers report significant progress in understanding how the combined effects of rare mutations and common genetic variation in determining whether a child will develop ASD and its consequential effects.
Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have applied a novel stem cell model to map disease risk variants in human neurons, which could help provide insights into the biological mechanisms that underlie neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
A new study looking at the impact of an autism assistance dog for children and their parents has made an unexpected discovery: the dog has expanded their world, literally, giving them the confidence to visit a lot more places.
Based on the positive results of a new pilot study offering personalized aquatic occupational therapy for 19 autistic children, researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine will expand the program to include 36 autistic children over the next year.
Autistic individuals are more likely to have chronic mental and physical health conditions, suggests new research from the University of Cambridge. Autistic individuals also report lower quality healthcare than others.
For the first time, scientists have found that brain differences in the visual brain systems of infants who later are diagnosed with autism are associated with inherited genetic factors.
In an analysis of reviews published between 2009 and 2020 that assessed therapeutic or educational interventions for very young children with or at high likelihood for autism, researchers found that certain types of interventions—called naturalistic developmental behavioral interventions, developmental interventions, and behavioral interventions—can provide benefits, but there were significant limitations in the quality of the evidence and many differences in how studies were performed.
University of North Carolina School of Medicine scientists, who report their results in the journal eLife, devised an experimental, gene-therapy-like technique to restore the normal activity of the gene deficient in people with Pitt-Hopkins syndrome.
An international research group led by Professor Toru Takumi (Senior Visiting Scientist, RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research) and Researcher Chia-wen Lin at Kobe University Graduate School of Medicine has shown that idiopathic autism*1 is caused by epigenetic*2 abnormalities in hematopoietic cells during fetal development, which results in immune dysregulation in the brain and gut.
UC San Diego scientists use lab-grown human brain tissue to identify neural abnormalities in Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome and show gene therapy tools can rescue neural structure and function.
Research led by King’s College London and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust has analysed factors associated with self-harm in over 111,000 adolescents aged 11-17 years old.
Children’s Hospital Los Angeles researcher Matthew Borzage, PhD, was part of an international project showing how the brain grows—and shrinks—over a lifetime. The growth charts will provide scientists with an invaluable benchmark for future brain development studies.
A report from the Autism Intervention Research Network on Physical Health (AIR-P), a multi-site collaboration housed within UCLA Health’s Department of Medicine, highlights the intersection of autism, poverty and race/ethnicity and their compounding impact on health and health care.
Zebrafish are social creatures. When they see another member of their species, they’ll orient towards them and swim closer, much like a human at a cocktail party turning to face someone who’s telling a joke over a plate of hors d’oeuvres. A mutation in a gene called EGR1 snuffs out this social behavior in zebrafish, researchers in the University of Oregon's Institute of Neuroscience show in a new study. And it disrupts dopamine signaling from certain neurons in the brain, which can affect mood and social behavior.
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are 160 times more likely to die from drowning than the general pediatric population, according to research published in the December 2017 issue of Injury Epidemiology. That is why Heather McCrackin, RN, a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) student at Cizik School of Nursing at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth Houston), is launching an Autism Drowning Prevention Resource Kit.
(INDIANAPOLIS) — Autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, is the world’s fastest-growing developmental disability, affecting 1 in 44 children in the United States alone. Fortunately, exercise provides many benefits for those with autism, including improvements to quality of life and management of stereotypical behaviors like verbal repetition and hand-flapping.
A new study using prenatal brain scans revealed significant differences in brain structures at around 25 weeks’ gestation between children who were later diagnosed with ASD and those who were not. The study adds to mounting evidence that autism begins in early development and suggests possible opportunities to identify the disorder at an earlier age.
The UC Davis MIND Institute is launching a $4 million research program aimed at finding transformative therapies for ADNP syndrome, a rare genetic condition. A group of interdisciplinary researchers will evaluate multiple gene therapies for possible use.
Embargoed press materials are now available for the Experimental Biology (EB) 2022 meeting, featuring cutting-edge research from across the life sciences. EB 2022, to be held April 2–5 in Philadelphia, is the annual meeting of five scientific societies bringing together thousands of scientists and 25 guest societies in one interdisciplinary community.
Scientists have known the amygdala is abnormally large in school-age children with autism, but now, for the first time, researchers from the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to demonstrate that the amygdala grows too rapidly in infancy.
The criminal justice system (CJS) is failing autistic people, argue researchers at the Autism Research Centre, University of Cambridge, after a survey of lawyers found that an overwhelming majority of their clients were not provided with adequate support or adjustments.
The 147th Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association (taking place in-person October 22–25, 2022 in Chicago) will explore new frontiers in neurology, including climate change and the brain, lab-grown brain structures for studying disease, and addressing disparities in neurologic care.
Bilal Haider is studying how multiple areas of the brain work together for visual perception. This could help researchers understand if neural activity “traffic jams” underlie all kinds of visual impairments: from running a red light when visual attention is elsewhere, to shedding light on the autism-affected brain.