Autism Research

Where are YOU on the Spectrum?

May 9, 2013
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Recently there has been a lot of negative conversation in the online world about autism and blogging. Some people have very strong opinions about everything from medications to vaccinations, and diets. It is easy to criticize and tell people what to do; it is even harder to figure out what to do. I have decided [...]

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Q&A With The Yale Autism Program [Video]

April 30, 2013
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James McPartland, an assistant professor of Child Psychiatry and Pscyhology at the Yale Child Study Center, answers a series of user-submitted autism questions. McPartland discusses the clinical definition of autism and how scientists at Yale are studying the genetics of autism.

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Lack of Facial Recognition in Autism Tied to Brain Anomaly [Study]

March 25, 2013
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Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) have discovered a brain anomaly that explains why some people diagnosed with autism cannot easily recognize faces — a deficit linked to the impairments in social interactions considered to be the hallmark of the disorder. They also say that the novel neuroimaging analysis technique they developed to arrive [...]

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47% of children with autism have fluent speech by age 8 [Study]

March 5, 2013
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A new study out of Kennedy Krieger Institute’s Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) brings good news to families of children with autism that also have a severe language delay. According to the study, 70% of children with autism that had a severe language delay at age four achieved phrase or fluent speech by [...]

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Brain Ultrasound Reveals Autism Risk at Birth

February 28, 2013
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More interesting autism research news this week, this time from Michigan State University. Researchers discovered that a brain ultrasound performed at birth can reveal a condition that is tied with an increased risk of autism. If the ultrasound reveals enlarged ventricles, which are cavities in the brain that store spinal fluid, then the child may [...]

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Fragile X Syndrome Turns Brain Cells Into Chatterboxes [Study]

February 22, 2013
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A team of researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine have discovered that Fragile X Syndrome turns some brain cells into chatterboxes. Fragile X is the most common genetic cause of cognitive disability and autism. The extra talk may make it harder for brain cells to identify and attend to important signals, potentially establishing [...]

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$2.125 million grant for autism stem cell research in NJ

February 19, 2013
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A research team at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and the New Jersey Autism Center of Excellence has just received a $2.125 million grant for autism stem cell research. The social symbol for autism awareness, a ribbon of brightly-colored puzzle pieces, reflects the complexity of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A new five-year $2.125 million grant [...]

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New Autism Research: Therapy Dogs, Folic Acid, Genetics and More

February 13, 2013
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My inbox was filled with several new autism research updates including the benefit of therapy dogs, prenatal folic acid use is associated with a decreased risk of autism and of course an autism and genetics study. Can therapy dogs be beneficial for children with autism spectrum disorder? “Interactions with therapy dogs, or the introduction of [...]

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Whole-exome Sequencing Identifies Inherited Mutations in Autism

February 4, 2013
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The following research study is interesting, especially for those of us fascinated with the topics of autism and genetics. While autism clearly runs in some families, few inherited genetic causes have been found. A major reason is that these causes are so varied that it’s hard to find enough people with a given mutation to [...]

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Children with Autism Visit ER More for Psychiatric Reasons

December 5, 2012
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A new study out of Kennedy Krieger reveals that children with autism that are nine times more likely to visit the emergency department for psychiatric reasons than their typical peers. Excerpt: In the first study to compare mental health-related emergency department (ED) visits between children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD), researchers found that [...]

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