by Debra Muzikar In the last decade the world has changed dramatically. Today’s teens unlike prior generations have grown up with iphones, ear buds, tablets, and apps. Although many teens may be digitally savvy they may lack the personal skills needed to make new friends or land a job. Smile &…

Downs Design® and NBZ Jeans® with  no buttons and zipperless jeans addresses dressing challenges for people with special needs. By Keri Bowers I recently ran across an amazingly altruistic clothing company and fell madly in love with both their clothing line and their central mission. As the mother …

I believe much of my misery was rooted in my perceived inability to make thoughtful, empowered and meaningful choices in my life—choices about my thoughts, my attitude, my perspective, and my behavior. By Emily Grey Berman The Vision I always wanted to be a mother. I had this vision of raisin…

The latest estimate of autism prevalence in the U.S., released last week, suggests the condition is even more common than previously thought. But the apparent rise in autism coincides with a decline in other developmental disorders, highlighting the complexity folded into this seemingly simple stati…

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Women with unusually high or low levels of certain pregnancy hormones increase their risk of having a child with autism by about 20 percent, suggests an analysis of blood from more than 600,000 women. The study, published 14 September in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, is the larg…

Implications of the Conjunctive Behavioral © Model on Our Society Today by Kurt Muzikar I always thought inspiration descended on one from some unknown source in the sky. When I walked, I would look up to the heavens, and ask for guidance. It never occurred to me that I should be looking down to the…

By Ramy Mahmoud In my 10 years of teaching ninth grade, I, as have many of my colleagues, struggled with a certain category of students; the low performers. These are the boys and girls who walk into our classes on the first day of school EXPECTING to fail. They know nothing about us, but we represe…

A powerful form of microscopy maps connections between neurons and could help researchers better understand communication between the cells. Each neuron connects to hundreds or even thousands of others through tiny junctions called synapses. Under a light microscope, synapses may blur together. Elec…

Over the past 20 years, my colleagues and I have watched a group of toddlers suspected of having autism grow into adults. By working with these individuals for such a long time, we’ve been able to see how their skills and behaviors differ as children and how these individual differences change over …

I would like to rephrase Dr. Stephen Shore’s statement “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism,” to become “if you’ve met one person with a label, you’ve simply seen the label and not the person.” By Kurt Muzikar The definition of  neologism is “a relativ…

By Debbie Denenburg Over the course of decades I have learned many coping strategies for all kinds of emotional situations which those of us on the spectrum experience. I was lucky enough to have my knowledge validated when eight of my articles got published in the book Been There. Done That. Try Th…

At University Hospital Bonn in Germany over the span of two years, a video camera recorded 14 people with chronic epilepsy, each with 12 electrodes implanted in their brains, as they waited to have a seizure. The goal was to identify the source of the seizures and treat them with surgery. These peop…