Michael Gandal’s commitment to autism research is a family affair: Even his son Eli, age 3 and a half, has put in time. When Eli was an infant, he enrolled as a control in a longitudinal study of siblings of children with autism; he periodically had his brain scanned and underwent behavioral testing…

"He sat patiently while she cried ... He didn't once make us feel like we were taking too long or being a nuisance." Source: The Autism Site

Researchers have monitored the active genome in brain organoids over the course of nearly two years. The patterns they see may hold clues about where and when in the developing brain scientists should look for autism’s origins. The researchers presented the unpublished work yesterday at the 2019 Soc…

Our own mothers were ashamed of us. Hid us our whole lives. Then you pull us out of the shadows… Maybe it was about making a buck. But you gave us a real family. By Nils Skudra One of the most upbeat films I’ve seen is The Greatest Showman, a 2017 musical biopic starring Hugh Jackman as Phineas Tayl…

Autistic people look at the world differently than others do. Even the earliest descriptions of autism noted atypical gaze as a key feature of the condition. Since then, it has become accepted that people with autism do not make the type of eye contact others generally expect — sometimes it’s too li…

By Nils Skudra This week I took the opportunity to watch The Theory of Everything, a 2014 biographical film about the renowned cosmologist and physicist Stephen Hawking who struggled with ALS (commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease) throughout his life but achieved remarkable success and internation…

Acceptance By Rachel Pretlow Let the waves be open! Let the light shine in! Let us embrace parts of us Where we have never been! The wind picks up and lofts me On coast and sea and shore To desert fruits and poppy seeds And to the Mother’s core I am a pollinator I fly with birds and bees I feel the …

The post Where autism and attention deficit meet appeared first on Spectrum | Autism Research News. Source: Spectrum News

A typical day for Adam Guastella begins with a cat in his face and ends with wrestling his three sons, aged 6, 8 and 12 years. In between, he might meet with autistic people in his clinic, scan their brains or coach them in managing their social anxiety. As a professor and clinical psychologist at t…

People with autism show scant activity in a poorly understood molecular process thought to regulate gene expression in the brain, according to a new study1. The process, called RNA editing, turns out to involve two proteins central to fragile X syndrome, one of the most common causes of autism. The …

When Rafael was two years old, he was diagnosed with autism. His parents took him to different therapists, but traditional therapies didn't seem to help him.Source: The Autism Site

How well autistic children perform basic tasks of daily living — dressing, grooming and the like — at about age 6 depends on their language skills, age of diagnosis and the extent of certain autism traits between ages 2 and 4. The severity of their autism also predicts how quickly they learn the tas…

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Community Newsletter! I’m your host, Chelsey B. Coombs, Spectrum’s engagement editor. Parents’ perceptions of autism have changed as the condition’s prevalence has increased, according to a new paper that analyzed survey data over a 15-year period. Those with autist…

Augmented reality for navigation is a hot topic in assistive technology.  In our analysis, we found that more than 600 articles on AR and assistive technology have been published since 2000, many within the past 5 years.  Why is that? What’s the big deal with AR, anyway?  In this article, we’ll take…