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New study finds 20% chance of autism in siblings of autistic children, confirming earlier research.
The link between autism and gut organisms seems to be stronger than we thought.
Neanderthal genes from ancient interbreeding may increase our susceptibility to autism.
Mothers with an immigrant background may be an important risk factor for autism.
One of the largest studies on this topic finds that the hormone simply doesn't improve social skills.
A surprising way to treat at least some autism cases.
Contrary to popular belief, estrogen hormones masculinize the brain in many mammals. The new findings might explain why boys are more affected by autism than girls.
Vaccines don't cause autism -- the myth just needs to go away.
Mozart's talent for spotting a tone without a reference may be more influenced by genetics than previously thought.
As if the disorder wasn't complicated enough.
Individuals with autism hear much more than regular people -- and music seems to help them communicate better.
Although the insecticide was banned decades ago, it still persists in the environment.
I'll be seeing you in the comment section.
The test could be a game changer for identifying autism.
Age matters!
Even diagnosing autism is difficult, let alone predict it -- from a single scan!
Knowing what it's not brings us one step closer to understanding what it is.
A longstanding debate is put to rest.
Their unique skills provided a huge advantage to the groups who embraced them.
There is no link between autism and vaccinations. Yet the science has not persuaded anti-vaxxers.
It pains me that studies like this have to be made.
Children with autism spectrum disorder do not react as well to pleasant or foul smells compared to non-ASD children. Previously, autistic toddlers were found to have a dampened response to sight, sound and touch. For their study, the researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel used a novel technique to gauge the smell response in both ASD and control groups, with 81% accuracy. The test is unobtrusive and doesn't require a personal account from behalf of the children - something that can be difficult to do with autistic children, who more often than not are highly uncommunicative. If the test can survive the test of time and other trials, it could very well be used to diagnose autism.
Some researchers are considering a pilot treatment that involves MDMA, the active psychoactive ingredient in ecstasy pills, to help adults diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) ooze out anxiety. ASD adults typically report difficulties in bonding with other people and often feel nervous in a social setting. Though illegal in the United States, MDMA has been recently explored for psychotherapeutic purposes with promising results reported in battling addiction or post traumatic stress disorder. If it receives approval - and there's a great deal of paperwork that needs to be filled before they get the green light - this would make it the first MDMA-assisted therapy for the treatment of social anxiety in autistic adults.
There's a growing body of evidence suggesting Vitamin D plays an important role in regulating serotonin. This means it could cause (deficiency) or treat Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) symptoms (supplement). For instance, one study prescribed Vitamin D3 to autistic children in an open trial and had a 80% success rate - that is, the children became less hyperactive, irritable, and engaged far less in stereotypical behavior. The children were also more responsive and compliant to their families.
Over the last couple of years, cases of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) increased by 30%, according to a reported issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Today, the CDC estimates that one in 150 8-year-olds in the U.S. has an autism spectrum disorder, or ASD. There's a whole debate surrounding this topic - where does this slew of new cases come from? Are we dealing with an epidemic-like event? It used to be vaccines that took the hit, but this was long debunked. There's another, maybe more plausible explanation: it's all a statistical mishap as far as diagnosis goes. In effect, if this is true, ASDs prevalence is stable, it's in the way we count the cases that the problem might lie.
A link between heightened intelligence and autism has been suspected by scientists based on empirical evidence, and now genetic screening seems to confirm this assumption. It seems people carrying genes that put people at risk of developing autism scored higher on intelligence scores than those who lacked the genes. This held true, however, for people carrying the genes but who didn't develop autism.
For most people, brains are pretty similar – our connections follow the same pattern, and while there are certainly exceptions, you could say that our brains are connected in pretty much the same way. But for autistic people, things are very different. A new study has found that each autistic brain has unique, highly idiosyncratic […]
A recent study has shown that no matter the culture, circumcised boys have a significantly larger chance of developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). According to the Danish researchers who conducted the study, the risk is especially larger for infantile autism, before the age of 5.
Researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (Sanford-Burnham) have found a chemical switch that both regulates the generation of new neurons from neural stem cells and the survival of existing nerve cells in the brain. Postmortem examination of the brains of Alzheimer’s patients and stroke victims found the switch that shuts off the signals was […]
An imbalance in chloride ions during a fetus’s development is one of the factors for autism, study shows. Some children today show clear symptoms of autism only a year or more after birth, such as the impossibility to focus on eye contact or poor language development. The study made by neuroscientist Yehezkel Ben-Ari and his […]
Some people just have the knack of remembering the face of everyone they’ve met in their lives, while others, on the opposite end of the spectrum, have a difficult time recognizing who they met yesterday. Now, researchers at Emory have identified the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous […]
Boredom, tiredness, stress – they can all lead to a big healthy yawn; but even when none of those are present, just witnessing someone yawn can be really contagious – and this is not just restricted to humans. Dogs yawn in response to human yawns, and chimpanzees and baboons yawn in response to each other. […]
It’s no easy task for any psychologist to bear the news to a parent that his child is suffering from autism. For the parent, receiving the news is much worse. Not all hope is lost, however, as it’s been reported that a promising fraction of those diagnosed with autism eventually recover during young adulthood, despite […]
Autism is one of the biggest medical mysteries of the 21st century, and researchers are still trying to figure out the causes of this condition. UC Davis MIND Institute researchers have made a significant step forward in that direction, identifying some specific antibodies that target fetal brain proteins in the blood of women with autistic […]
It seems to me that we’ve just began to scratch the surface of what we know about autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). It’s been recently shown that autism is linked with child prodigies and that for some reason, autism rates continue to increase, especially in male population. Now, according to researchers at Vanderbilt University and the […]
Researchers Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and the University of Toronto have demonstrated for the first time that is possible to confirm or independently assess clinical diagnoses of autism in children simply by analyzing their brain activity. Reliable and efficient, their method might be employed at a massive scale as a means of […]
[This is a sponsored post by Sherry Lindbak] When a child is diagnosed with autism, families often embark on a lifelong quest to find answers, to seek treatment, and to maintain hope. Hope may now come in the form of a cure for autism if a new research study proves successful. Dr. Michael Chez, director […]
Autism is a condition we’re just starting to learn about, and currently, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects up to 1 in 110 people. The problem here is that while some drugs do treat some symptoms, none can deal with the social deficits common to ASD in humans. As it turns out, mice, can be autistic […]
Autism is truly one of the medical conditions we have extremely much to learn about – the only way it can be diagnosed is through behavior, and not by cause or mechanism. It would appear that lately, the number of autism cases have grown dramatically, but then again, maybe we’ve just gotten better at detecting […]
For most of us, many of the actions we undertake are made while taking into account how others perceive them. Sociologists call it the “theory of the mind”, and it’s the innate ability we have developed, as social beings, to form a personal social reputation – basically, we care what other think of us and […]
Autism is still yet poorly understood, and researchers are just starting to figure out the mechanisms behind this strange condition which seems to affect more and more children (and not only) with each passing year. A 6 year autism study The ambitious six year effort attempted to gauge the rate of autism in a South […]
Pictured on the left is Eden Sawczenko, an autistic four year girl from Stevenage, that has had a lot of problems bonding with other children, not being able to understand emotions and actually frawining upon them. Her best friend in the world is Kaspar, a very friendly human-like, child-sized robot built by scientists from University […]
According to wikpiedia, Autism is a brain development disorder that impairs social interaction and communication, and causes restricted and repetitive behavior, all starting before a child is three years old. It is very heritable, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is generally unclear which genes are responsible. A study showed that previously […]
