Developing a Test for Autism

A revolutionary new test takes the guesswork out of confirming autism.

Researchers at Harvard have found a new way to use brain scans to confirm the presence of autism. Rather than look for structural abnormalities of the brain, these researchers decided to look at the circuitry that links these structures. The test makes use of preexisting technology in the form of MRI brain scans.

Until now, there was no subjective way to diagnose autism: no clinical tests perform that would prove or disprove autism. Autism could only be presumed by observing the subject’s autistic behavior.

Gold Standard

Previous efforts to find a biological test for autism have been a failure. Researchers looking for the gold standard of a biological autism test had focused in the main on viewing the various structures of the brain, looking for differences between the typical and the autistic brain. But this search yielded no fruit.

Harvard Medical School’s Nicholas Lange and his team decided to look for anomalies in the circuitry that links the brain structures rather than at the functional brain structures themselves. “The brain may be okay, the parts that do the work may be okay,” said Lange. “But the wiring—the ‘cables’ between the points in the brain, one to another –may be disrupted in some way.”

Harvard Medical School

The circuitry of the brain is also called “white matter” and can be seen with magnetic resonance imaging scans (MRI). Lange applied a specific technique called diffusion tensor imaging that can show to what extent the brain’s circuits are organized.

Uncooked Spaghetti

Lange says the brain’s circuitry is not unlike a package of uncooked spaghetti, all neat and organized within its packaging. After the spaghetti is cooked, however, it’s just a disorganized tangle. The circuitry of the brain can be very organized like the neat packages of spaghetti on a grocer’s shelf, or it can resemble a tangle of pasta in a colander.

With the help of MRI scans, the researchers were able to assess the organization of these connections in the two parts of the brain dedicated to language and social functioning. According to the results of their work, just published in the journal Autism Research, the scientists were able to use these scans to tell who had autism with 94% accuracy. A later study performed to confirm these findings had an even greater success rate, making this the most accurate biological test for autism, yet.

Lange believes the application of this research is most helpful for other researchers at this point. Further studies need be done to prove the worth of this diagnostic tool; though Lange feels such scans might be helpful in confirming autism at an earlier stage than is possible at present, making early intervention a possibility. At present, autism cannot be diagnosed before the age of three.

Surviving the Season

Getting Through the Holidays with the LD Child

How can parents and their children with learning disabilities (LD) get through the holiday season with a minimum of emotional meltdowns?

This time of year, we often hear the words “merry” and “joyous” banded about in reference to the holiday season. But for the parents of a child with a learning disability, the holiday is anything but a happy time. Routine and structure are the lifeblood of a child with a learning difficulty of any sort and the long winter vacation offers just the opposite. It’s no wonder things get a little hairy and emotional meltdowns are the order, rather than the exception, of the day.

The antidote is clear: in order for parents (and their children) to survive, some sort of structure must be imposed and a routine created. Yet the holidays are hectic and overwhelming, even for well-organized adults. How can a parent compensate for the lack of structure and routine for a learning-disabled child when things are so frenzied?

The simplest way to help your child is to include them as a factor in your holiday planning. Just as you schedule your holidays plans in your calendar (bake X-mas cookies Wednesday, host open-house from 12PM-5PM January 1st) so too, you can pencil in activities with your child. The typical school day is broken up into regular blocks of time spent in routine activities. You can’t quite mimic that effect, and you’re not expected to do so, but any kind of quiet, scheduled activity, for instance 45 minutes of reading from a favorite storybook, can give your child back their bearings at this time.

Ongoing Activities

In order to keep your child from feeling pressured, you may want to make an activity an ongoing event. For instance, if your child likes decorating the tree, schedule a time of day for that, and let them decorate the tree over a period of days. You can start things off by stringing the lights. Then, during the time you’ve scheduled each day for tree-decoration, place a box of ornaments nearby for them to choose from.

The great thing about this activity is that your child feels included in your holiday preparations. They feel a part of things. Stay near your child to offer assistance as needed, and don’t neglect to tell them stories about the history of those decorations.

A parent should also prioritize their holiday plans and activities. Each demand on your time and energy should be considered in the light of your child’s needs and what you must provide to keep them happy and calm. In some cases, you may not have a choice. Some family outings, for instance, may be mandatory.

Examining Choices

If going to Grandma’s house for X-mas Eve dinner is nonnegotiable, attending five open houses in a row definitely is open to discussion. Keep plans down to a minimum for the sake of your child to avoid exposing them to unfamiliar surroundings, activities, and fuss. You can discuss this as a family and decide together which events take precedence and which, with regrets, you must skip. By examining your choices together as a family, you can determine the best way to spend your emotional and physical resources.

Last but not least, schedule in the joy. Clear a space on your calendar to just be with each other and enjoy time together. Take a walk in the snow and smell the air. Listen to some holiday music and sip a cup of hot cocoa together. Talk to your child and listen to them, too. That’s the stuff of joy for both you and your child and the holiday dividends of being a parent.

Happy Holidays!

Thanks to www.cognibeat.com for allowing us to reproduce this article. It can be found in it's entirety at http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/survivingtheseason/

Fake Aspies

Asperger’s Syndrome as a Social Excuse

Asperger’s Syndrome is the flavor of the month and gives the anti-social a way to explain their boorish behavior. What do the experts have to say?

When Caroline Arnold, a 20 year-old college student, heard about Asperger’s Syndrome for the first time, she said it was like a light went on for her. Everything she read about the syndrome seemed to fit her to a T. The symptoms sounded like mild autism: a great gift for math, an extreme focus on details, and an intense discomfort with intimacy and interpersonal relationships.

Arnold had long wondered what was wrong with her. While she had a rich online life and many virtual friends, she was frustrated when it came to having face-to-face interactions such as with coworkers. She found it impossible to sustain romantic relationships for any significant amount of time.

Now at last, Caroline had a real medical term for her strange personality. At last she could take comfort in knowing that her differentness wasn’t imagined and that there was a disorder to explain her abrasive ways. It was no longer her fault that she was so weird.

Caroline isn’t alone. Recent estimates posit that there are millions of young adults who are so convinced that Asperger’s syndrome explains their interpersonal failures that they no longer bother to seek out a medical evaluation to confirm a diagnosis, or receive any kind of treatment.

Unlikeable People

Yet, as far back as 2004, The Lancet found that Arnold and other like her don’t have Asperger’s syndrome at all. These self-diagnosing social misfits just aren’t likable people. They’re just jerks, looking for a medical term to excuse their inept social behavior.

Here’s how Caroline decided she was an “Aspie:”

“I took an online test called, ‘Do you have Asperger’s Syndrome’ and got a very high score,” said Arnold.  “The results said that I’m brilliant and that I should think of my poor people skills as a gift rather than as ineptitude.  Those Lancet researchers can say what they like, but that’s what my test said, and that’s enough for me.”


The “Do you have Asperger’s Syndrome” quiz has been circulating on the Internet to the point that the quiz has gone viral. The weird thing is that people seem to take a kind of perverse pride in generating a high score. Some are even calling the quiz the new Mensa test. Is it any wonder then, that a scientific revelation that the quiz has no diagnostic value has not been well-received?

Death Threats

Study author Dr. Leon McCouch said he and his research team knew that their work would generate controversy, but the torrent of online death threats and hate mail they received on publicizing the results was stunning. McCouch insists he never meant to upset or insult anyone, but felt a duty to stem claims that “boorish behavior” could be blamed on Asperger’s Syndrome.

McCouch added that maybe he and his team should have predicted this reaction. As McCouch put it, “What else would you expect when you speak truth to a bunch of assholes?"

McCouch’s motive was to lend encouragement to those who suspect they might have Asperger’s to get tested for the disorder. But he admits that for most people, the lust for an official diagnosis is outweighed by the all-too-real possibility that they might be told they don’t have Asperger’s at all.



This article has been copied with kind permission from www.cognibeat.com and can be found in it's entirety at http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/fakeaspies

Rising Autism Figures

Greater Awareness or True Increase?

Two recent government studies have found that 1 in 100 children are afflicted with autism disorders.  This figure is higher than a previous estimate which put the number at closer to 1 in 150. Federal health officials believe that the increase is due to better awareness and broader-based definitions of autism, which have led to a greater ability to spot the condition in younger children.


Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health voiced the concern that the figures may still reflect a true increase in the condition. "We're going to have to think very hard about what we're going to do for the 1 in 100," said Insel.

Behavior-Based Diagnosis

It’s hard to generate an exact figure on how many children have autism, because the diagnosis is based on the child’s behavior, explained Dr. Susan E. Levy from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "With diabetes you can get a blood test," said Levy. "As of yet, there's no consistent biologic marker we can use to make the diagnosis of autism." Levy is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics subcommittee on autism.

Earlier estimates put the number of U.S. children with autism at around 560,000. This new estimate would raise that figure to around 673,000.

Overused Term

Dr. Jennifer Ashton states that boys are diagnosed with autism four-times more than girls. Ashton cautions that some experts believe that the term “autism” is in overuse, but she views the increased awareness of the condition as a positive development.

Insel says that President Obama has prioritized autism research. Federal stimulus money has been set aside for autism, and a law passed in 2006 generated millions of federal dollars into autism research, evaluation, and treatment.

The recent findings, which include data at the state level, will assist the government in planning new autism services. This is according to Michael Kogan, a federal Health Resources and Services Administration researcher. Kogan led this study which included authors from many august government bodies, including the CDC.

The findings were produced by way of a national telephone survey including 78,000 parents of kids aged 3-17. While the survey dealt with a number of health issues, two of the questions were about autism.

Parents were asked if they’d ever had a doctor or other health care provider tell them their child had autism, Asperger’s syndrome, pervasive developmental disorder, or any other autism spectrum disorder.  If this question generated a positive response, parents were then asked whether their child has autism or an autism spectrum disorder at the present time. Two yeses were counted as representing an autistic child.

Children suffering from autism find it hard to communicate and interact. They resist eye contact and engage in repetitive movement such as hand-flapping or rocking.

"Autism is a highly prevalent disorder," said Geraldine Dawson, who is chief science officer for Autism Speaks. "We're looking at a major public health challenge."



This article has been copied with kind permission from www.cognibeat.com and can be found in it's entirety at http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/risingautismfigures

Hans Asperger - Who Was He?

Hans Asperger

Who Was Asperger, Anyway?

One of the cooler aspects of discovering a new syndrome or disease, aside from making medical history, is that you get to name the disease after yourself. In the case of Asperger’s Syndrome (AS), the name is derived from Hans Asperger, an Austrian pediatrician, Feb. 18, 1906 - Oct. 21, 1980. Hans Asperger was a prolific writer, penning over 300 publications, most of them to do with autism in children.

Uninterested Classmates

Asperger was born to a farming family in the rural town of Hausbrunn, which lies on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria. The eldest of two boys, as a youngster he had a talent for languages and liked to quote the poet Franz Grillparzer to his uninterested classmates.

Quoted Himself

Some say that Asperger exhibited many of the tendencies of the syndrome he so well described. Hans found it hard to make friends and was seen as somewhat introverted. He was known to refer to himself in the third person and would often quote his own words.
He studied medicine in Vienna, becoming a doctor of medicine in 1931. Asperger practiced at Vienna’s University Children’s Hospital. In 1935  Dr. Asperger married and went on to father 5 children.

Toward the end of World War II Asperger served as a medical officer in Croatia. His younger brother perished in The Battle of Stalingrad.

After the publication of Asperger’s landmark paper on autism symptoms in 1944, he was given a tenured position at the University of Vienna. Just after the war ended, he was made the director of a children’s clinic in that city. Asperger was appointed chair of pediatrics at the university and served in that position for 2 decades. He later took a position in Innsbruck. In 1964 he agreed to head the SOS-Kinderdorf in Hinterbrühl, becoming professor emeritus in 1977.

Dr. Asperger first wrote up his definition of Asperger’s syndrome in 1944 but his work was little recognized during his lifetime. This is due to the fact that his work was in German and translations were rare. The first paper to mention Asperger’s Syndrome was published in 1981 by Lorna Wing, a British researcher. Wing’s paper on the subject, Asperger's syndrome: a clinical account, served as a challenge to the accepted model of autism as presented by Leo Kanner in 1943.

Once Asperger’s findings began to be translated into English in 1989, the English-speaking world sat up and took note. At that point, his findings gained notice and Asperger’s syndrome received recognition as a diagnosis.

Asperger had identified a certain pattern of behaviors and special abilities in four boys which he called “autistic psychopathy.” This pattern of behavior included, "a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversations, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements." Asperger spoke of children with AS as "little professors" because they could speak on a favorite topic in great detail.

Dr. Asperger believed that these children would make use of their special talents when they reached adulthood. One of the children, Fritz V., later became a professor of astronomy and managed to solve an error in Newton’s work that he had noticed in his childhood.

Dr. Hans Asperger

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Asperger’s work is his positive description of Asperger’s syndrome which is striking in comparison to Leo Kanner’s depressing description of autism. Asperger’s syndrome is considered a higher-functioning form of autism.

The original publication of this blog can be found here: http://community.cognibeat.com/2010/12/hansasperger/