Archive for the 'Prevention' Category

We have learned a lot about autism in the time since I first began working with children whom most would call clear cases of early infantile autism in the 1960s and 70s. For one good thing, we are no longer dogged by B. Bettlehiem’s theory that autism is caused by cold, distant (“refrigerator”) mothering. But we have much to learn, still.

Although we know much more about the language and social problems that autistic children have, scientists been not yet constructed a compelling theory of possible genetic causes and neurological deficits that likely underlie this disorder. However, a group of neuroscience researchers at the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology (MIT) is hoping to unravel the sources of the disorder, according to Emily Singer of the MIT Technology Review.

Based on their view that autism is a multple-allele problem and aided by a large grant, the scientists plan to investigage many fundamental connections.

“We will look for a relationship between gene variation and variation in the brain,” says John Gabrieli, an MIT neuroscientist. Gabrieli will use fMRI, a type of MRI that shows which areas of the brain are active when people think about specific problems, to compare brain activity in normal individuals and in those with different forms of the suspected autism genes. Specifically, his group will look at how people deal with social functions, by imaging brain activity in response to faces and facial expressions.

Link to Drawing Out Autism by Ms. Singer