Links for Keyword: Autism

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, or subscribe to our mailing list, to receive news updates. Learn more.

Links 41 - 60 of 505

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online A simple brain trace can identify autism in children as young as two years old, scientists believe. A US team at Boston Children's Hospital say EEG traces, which record electrical brain activity using scalp electrodes, could offer a diagnostic test for this complex condition. EEG clearly distinguished children with autism from other peers in a trial involving nearly 1,000 children. Experts say more work is needed to confirm the BMC Medicine study results. Early detection There are more than 500,000 people with autism in the UK. Autism is a spectrum disorder, which means that it is not a single condition and will affect individuals in different ways. Commonly, people with autism have trouble with social interaction and can appear locked in their own worlds. It can be a difficult condition to diagnose and can go undetected for years. The latest study found 33 specific EEG patterns that appeared to be linked to autism. BBC © 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 16964 - Posted: 06.26.2012

For young children with autism, directing attention boosts language

An intervention in which adults actively engaged the attention of preschool children with autism by pointing to toys and using other gestures to focus their attention results in a long term increase in language skills, according to researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health. At age 8, children with autism who received therapy centered on sharing attention and play when they were 3 or 4 years old had stronger vocabularies and more advanced language skills than did children who received standard therapy. All of the children in the study attended preschool for 30 hours each week. “Some studies have indicated that such pre-verbal interactions provide the foundation for building later language skills,” said Alice Kau, Ph.D., of the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Branch of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD.“This study confirms that intensive therapy to engage the attention of young children with autism helps them acquire language faster and build lasting language skills.” The study findings appear in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The 40 children who participated in the study were 8 and 9 years old. Five years earlier, they had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and received the intensive therapy program or standard intervention, as part of a separate study.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 18: Attention and Higher Cognition
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 14: Attention and Consciousness
Link ID: 16956 - Posted: 06.23.2012

Competitors Form Partnership to Develop Autism Drugs

By ANDREW POLLACK Two of the front-runners in the race to develop drugs to treat mental retardation and autism are joining forces, hoping to save money and get to the market sooner. A deal, expected to be announced on Tuesday, will pool the resources of Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical giant, and Seaside Therapeutics, a private 30-employee company based in Cambridge, Mass. “This deal will establish the biggest effort to date” in autism drugs, Luca Santarelli, head of neuroscience for Roche, said before the announcement. Financial terms are not being disclosed. There is rising excitement that drugs might be able to relieve some of the behavioral problems associated with autism and in particular a cause of autism and mental retardation known as fragile X syndrome. About 100,000 Americans have fragile X syndrome. Some parents of children being treated with new drugs in clinical trials have said they see positive changes in behavior. Becky Zorovic of Sharon, Mass., said that when she used to take her son Anders, who has fragile X, to the dentist, she would have to lie in the chair and hold him on top of her as he screamed. But after Anders starting taking Seaside’s drug, arbaclofen, in a clinical trial, she said, “He sat in the chair by himself and he opened his mouth and let the dentist polish his teeth and even scrape his teeth.” Anders has also has gone to birthday parties, which he once refused to do, she said. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Freezer failure at brain bank hampers autism research

By Karen Weintraub A freezer malfunction at Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital has severely damaged one-third of the world’s largest collection of autism brain samples, potentially setting back research on the disorder by years, scientists say. An official at the renowned brain bank in Belmont discovered that the freezer had shut down in late May, without triggering two alarms. Inside, they found 150 thawed brains that had turned dark from decay; about a third of them were part of a collection of autism brains. “This was a priceless collection,’’ said Dr. Francine Benes, director of the Harvard Brain Tissue Resource Center, where the brains were housed. “You can’t express its value in dollar amounts,’’ said Benes, who is leading one of two internal investigations into the freezer failure. The damage to these brains could slow autism research by a decade as the collection is restored, said Carlos Pardo, a neuropathologist and associate professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University. The collection, owned by the advocacy and research organization Autism Speaks, “yields very, very important information that allows us to have a better understanding of what autism is, as well as the contribution of environmental and immune factors,’’ said Pardo, whose 2004 study of brains stored in the bank was the first to find that autism involves the immune system. “The benefit has been great.’’ © 2012 NY Times Co.

Antidepressants in water trigger autism genes in fish

by Sara Reardon Low levels of antidepressants and other psychoactive drugs in water supplies can trigger the expression of genes associated with autism – in fish at least. The use of antidepressants has increased dramatically over the past 25 years, says Michael Thomas of Idaho State University in Pocatello. Around 80 per cent of each drug passes straight through the human body without being broken down, and so they are present in waste water. In most communities, water purification systems cannot filter out these pharmaceuticals. "They just fly right through," says Thomas, which means they ultimately find their way into the water supply. The concentration of these drugs in drinking water is very low – at most, they are present at levels 100 times lower than the prescription doses. But since the drugs are specifically designed to act on the nervous system, Thomas hypothesised that even a small dose could affect a developing fetus. Thomas's group created a cocktail of the anti-epileptic drug carbamazepine and two selective serotonin uptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressants, fluoxetine and venlafaxine, at this low concentration. They exposed fathead minnows (Pimephales promelas) to the drugs for 18 days, then analysed the genes that were being expressed in the fishes' brains. Although the researchers had expected the drugs might activate genes involved in all kinds of neurological disorders, only 324 genes associated with autism in humans appeared to be significantly altered. Most of these genes are involved in early brain development and wiring. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 12: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavioral Disorders; Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development
Link ID: 16885 - Posted: 06.07.2012

Fever in pregnancy linked to autism

By Nathan Seppa Spiking a fever in pregnancy may contribute to autism risk in the offspring. Researchers report that women who run a high temperature while pregnant — and don’t treat it — appear twice as likely to have a child with autism as women who don’t report any untreated fevers. Other studies have suggested a link between infectious diseases during gestation and a heightened risk of having a child with an autism spectrum disorder. But the new study didn’t find a specific connection between influenza and the behavioral disorders, the researchers report in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. “I think this is the largest and most careful study that’s been done on the topic of fever and influenza in autism development,” says Paul Patterson, a developmental neurobiologist at Caltech, who wasn’t part of this study. Researchers at the University of California, Davis identified 538 children with an autism spectrum disorder, 163 others with developmental delays and 421 who were developing without any apparent problems. The children’s mothers provided health information on their pregnancies. After accounting for differences in race, child’s age, insurance, smoking, mother’s education and residence at the time of birth, the scientists found that women who had suffered an uncontrolled fever during pregnancy were roughly twice as likely to have an autistic child as mothers with no untreated fevers. Fever in gestation was also associated with a more than doubled risk of developmental delays, report the researchers, who recently also linked autism risk with obesity in pregnancy (SN: 5/19/12, p. 16). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 13: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of Internal States
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 9: Homeostasis: Active Regulation of the Internal Environment
Link ID: 16854 - Posted: 05.31.2012

Blinks Reveal What Toddlers Think

By Morgen E. Peck Tracking eye movements lets scientists figure out what we pay attention to in a scene. When people blink during such experiments, those few milliseconds are usually discarded as junk data. A new study finds that blinking might reveal important information, too. It turns out that the more we blink, the less focused is our attention. In kids with autism, blink patterns appear to offer clues about how they engage with the world around them. During eye-tracking experiments with toddlers, Warren Jones, a pediatrician at the Emory University School of Medicine, found that the children were strategic about when they blinked. While watching a recorded scene, the toddlers seemed to inhibit their blinking during the moments that sucked them in. “The timing of when we don’t blink seems to relate to how engaged we are with what we’re looking at,” Jones says. He now uses this discovery as a tool to study attention in autistic children. In a paper published last December in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Jones observed differences in the blinking patterns of autistic and developmentally normal children. Both groups watched a video that included moments of human emotion and sudden action. Developmentally normal children inhibited their blinking before emotional climaxes, as though they were following the narrative and predicting an outcome. Autistic children blinked right through those moments, suggesting they were not following the emotional arc of the story, but they responded sharply when an object suddenly moved. © 2012 Scientific American,

Searching for the Onset of Autism

By Mariette DiChristina Early behavioral intervention has shown some promise as a way to help children with autism. But it’s difficult to see the hallmarks of autism before two years of age with today’s diagnostic criteria. Could we find other methods? Seeking to answer that question is Jed Elison at the California Institute of Technology, who is working with Ralph Adolphs at Caltech and Joe Piven at the University of North Carolina among other colleagues around the U.S. and Canada. Elison provided some preliminary findings at the Neuromagic 2012 conference held from May 7 to 10, 2012 on San Simón, the Island of Thought, near Vigo, Spain. Today’s criteria, from the psychiatric bible called the DSM-IV, include attributes of social impairments, communication deficits, and repetitive patterns of behavior and restricted interests (either in intensity or content). “There’s a biological reality,” said Elison, “that you can’t capture perfectly with a classification system like this.” Nevertheless, there’s “no question that the classification system serves a very important role in identifying kids who require specialized clinical services” Recognizing the condition early can help. “There’s some evidence that early intervention alleviates” some of the behavioral challenges for these children, he added. Elison and collaborative partners of the Infant Brain Imaging Study Network are recruiting families who have a child with autism and an infant sibling under six months of age. © 2012 Scientific American

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 2: Functional Neuroanatomy: The Nervous System and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 2: Cells and Structures: The Anatomy of the Nervous System
Link ID: 16800 - Posted: 05.16.2012

Agent reduces autism-like behaviors in mice

National Institutes of Health researchers have reversed behaviors in mice resembling two of the three core symptoms of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). An experimental compound, called GRN-529, increased social interactions and lessened repetitive self-grooming behavior in a strain of mice that normally display such autism-like behaviors, the researchers say. GRN-529 is a member of a class of agents that inhibit activity of a subtype of receptor protein on brain cells for the chemical messenger glutamate, which are being tested in patients with an autism-related syndrome. Although mouse brain findings often don't translate to humans, the fact that these compounds are already in clinical trials for an overlapping condition strengthens the case for relevance, according to the researchers. "Our findings suggest a strategy for developing a single treatment that could target multiple diagnostic symptoms," explained Jacqueline Crawley, Ph.D., of the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). "Many cases of autism are caused by mutations in genes that control an ongoing process — the formation and maturation of synapses, the connections between neurons. If defects in these connections are not hard-wired, the core symptoms of autism may be treatable with medications." Crawley, Jill Silverman, Ph.D., and colleagues at NIMH and Pfizer Worldwide Research and Development, Groton, CT, report on their discovery April 25th, 2012 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Evidence behind autism drugs may be biased

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK — Doctors' belief that certain antidepressants can help to treat repetitive behaviors in kids with autism may be based on incomplete information, according to a new review of published and unpublished research. The drugs, which include popular selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), are sometimes used to treat repetitive behaviors in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). "The main issue to emphasize is that SSRIs are perhaps not as effective at treating repetitive behaviors as previously thought. Further research will help confirm these findings in the long run," said Melisa Carrasco, the study's lead author, in an email. For their analysis, Carrasco, a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, and her colleagues examined PubMed and ClinicalTrials.gov for randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled trials -- considered the gold standard in medical research -- supporting the use of SSRIs and similar antidepressants in children with autism. Their search yielded 15 trials. Five studies were excluded because they did not meet the researchers' criteria. Another five were listed as completed but never published. © 2012 msnbc.com

Related chapters from BP6e: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior; Chapter 16: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavior Disorders
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 13: Memory, Learning, and Development; Chapter 12: Psychopathology: Biological Basis of Behavioral Disorders
Link ID: 16695 - Posted: 04.24.2012

The Autism Wars

By AMY HARMON THE report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that one in 88 American children have an autism spectrum disorder has stoked a debate about why the condition’s prevalence continues to rise. The C.D.C. said it was possible that the increase could be entirely attributed to better detection by teachers and doctors, while holding out the possibility of unknown environmental factors. But the report, released last month, also appears to be serving as a lightning rod for those who question the legitimacy of a diagnosis whose estimated prevalence has nearly doubled since 2007. As one person commenting on The New York Times’s online article about it put it, parents “want an ‘out’ for why little Johnny is a little hard to control.” Or, as another skeptic posted on a different Web site, “Just like how all of a sudden everyone had A.D.H.D. in the ’90s, now everyone has autism.” The diagnosis criteria for autism spectrum disorders were broadened in the 1990s to encompass not just the most severely affected children, who might be intellectually disabled, nonverbal or prone to self-injury, but those with widely varying symptoms and intellectual abilities who shared a fundamental difficulty with social interaction. As a result, the makeup of the autism population has shifted: only about a third of those identified by the C.D.C. as autistic last month had an intellectual disability, compared with about half a decade ago. © 2012 The New York Times Company

Autism risk rises if woman obese during pregnancy

Obesity during pregnancy may increase chances for having a child with autism, provocative new research suggests. It's among the first studies linking the two, and though it doesn't prove obesity causes autism, the authors say their results raise public health concerns because of the high level of obesity in this country. Study women who were obese during pregnancy were about 67 percent more likely than normal-weight women to have autistic children. They also faced double the risk of having children with other developmental delays. On average, women face a 1 in 88 chance of having a child with autism; the results suggest that obesity during pregnancy would increase that to a 1 in 53 chance, the authors said. The study was being released online Monday in Pediatrics. Since more than one-third of U.S. women of child-bearing age are obese, the results are potentially worrisome and add yet another incentive for maintaining a normal weight, said researcher Paula Krakowiak, a study co-author and scientist at UC Davis. Previous research has linked obesity during pregnancy with stillbirths, preterm births and some birth defects. More research is needed to confirm the results. But if mothers' obesity is truly related to autism, it would be only one of many contributing factors, said Dr. Daniel Coury, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. He was not involved in the study. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Can autistic kids be helped by a play-based program?

For children with autism, it's a confusing world. Trying to communicate with these kids can be a struggle as they often seem to be locked inside their own impenetrable worlds. Therapists who work with autistic children are constantly on the lookout for ways to get them to engage with others. Now, researchers at York University in Toronto are carrying out the first study of a play-based therapy program that has had some remarkable success in drawing some autistic children out of their solitary worlds and into a shared one. In this video, the CBC's Ioanna Roumeliotis offers a moving look inside floortime therapy ... and how it's given one Ontario family new hope for their son. © CBC 2012

Spontaneous gene glitches linked to autism risk with older dads

Researchers have turned up a new clue to the workings of a possible environmental factor in autism spectrum disorders (ASDs): fathers were four times more likely than mothers to transmit tiny, spontaneous mutations to their children with the disorders. Moreover, the number of such transmitted genetic glitches increased with paternal age. The discovery may help to explain earlier evidence linking autism risk to older fathers. The results are among several from a trio of new studies, supported in part by the National Institutes of Health, finding that such sequence changes in parts of genes that code for proteins play a significant role in ASDs. One of the studies determined that having such glitches boosts a child’s risk of developing autism five to 20 fold. Taken together, the three studies represent the largest effort of its kind, drawing upon samples from 549 families to maximize statistical power. They reveal sporadic mutations widely distributed across the genome, sometimes conferring risk and sometimes not. While the changes identified don’t account for most cases of illness, they are providing clues to the biology of what are likely multiple syndromes along the autism spectrum. All three teams sequenced the protein coding parts of genes in parents and an affected child – mostly in families with only one member touched by autism. One study also included comparisons with healthy siblings. Although these protein-coding areas represent only about 1.5 percent of the genome, they harbor 85 percent of disease-causing mutations. This strategy optimized the odds for detecting the few spontaneous errors in genetic transmission that confer autism risk from the “background noise” generated by the many more benign mutations.

Autism rates rise again

By Bruce Bower New federal data indicate that 1 in 88 U.S. children had autism or other autism spectrum disorders in 2008, up from 1 in 110 kids in 2006 and 1 in 150 in 2002. Although that’s a worrisome trend, reasons for autism’s rising prevalence — measured in nonrepresentative national samples of 8-year-olds — remain unclear. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta released the latest autism figures on March 30. CDC researchers used health records, educational records or both to identify children with autism spectrum disorders in parts of 14 states. Data for more than 38,000 kids were consulted. “Such a big increase in autism spectrum disorders in such a short time seems a little odd, and there’s a lot of noise in these data,” says psychiatrist Fred Volkmar of the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, Conn. Some of the clatter stems from divergent diagnostic and record-keeping practices across states and school districts, Volkmar says. Children with various learning problems sometimes get labeled with autism spectrum disorders to receive special education services, he adds. Rates of autism spectrum disorders fluctuated markedly from one state to another, the CDC reports. Prevalence ranged from 21.2 cases for every 1,000 children in Utah to 4.8 cases for every 1,000 kids in Alabama. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2012

Parents are changing autism research

By Karen Weintraub On a recent Sunday, while Walt was baking gluten-free cookies, his mother had to remind him to check the recipe, put the eggs away, and close the refrigerator door. But he navigated the oven and timer just fine, and carefully used a spatula to shift the warm cookies from the baking sheet to the cooling rack. A few minutes later, after a quick, reassuring hug, the 16-year-old resumed the scrapbook he had started that morning, printing out pictures of his favorite Theodore Tugboats, trimming them to fit, and labeling each one. “I did so awesome,’’ he said excitedly when he was done. He piled five of the now-cool cookies onto a plate, hurried off into another room, and crooned Christmas carols to calm himself down. Life with Walt alternates between moments of enthusiasm and anxiety, scowls and spontaneous hugs, typical teenage behavior and younger-than-his-age interests. Diagnosed with autism as a preschooler, Walt went through years of temper tantrums, diarrhea, skin scratching, unpredictable behaviors, and obvious physical pain. A few minutes spent at his airy Groton home reveal both that Walt, now 5 feet 6 inches tall, is not a typical teenager, and that he and his family - including two siblings not on the autism spectrum - manage his challenges with good nature, warmth, and lots of humor. Like many parents of autistic children, Walt’s mother, Sarah Connell has often been ahead of his doctors and caregivers in coming up with new ways to help him. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Outgrowing autism? Study looks at why some kids 'bloom'

By Linda Carroll Karen Melville remembers when her son Danny was diagnosed with autism so severe that his doctor feared he might never even talk, much less go to school. “It was like a freight train hit,” said Melville, a 39-year-old mother of two who lives in Brunswick, Ohio. Five years of intensive therapy have paid off. Danny, now age 7, is OK’d to go to school next year in a mostly mainstream class that will have a total of three “high functioning” kids with autism. “Now when he finds something he thinks is really cool on the computer -- like a humpback whale swimming -- he wants to show me,” Melville said. Danny may be one of what researchers are now calling “bloomers” – kids who start out as severely affected but who manage to grow beyond most of their symptoms. About 10 percent of children who are severely affected by autism at age 3 seem to have “bloomed” by age 8, leaving behind many of the condition’s crippling deficits, a new study shows. And while these “bloomers” still retain some of autism’s symptoms, like the tendency to rock back and forth when stressed or to repeat the same behavior over and over, they become what experts dub, “high functioning,” according to the study published today in Pediatrics. That means their social skills and their ability to communicate have vastly improved. A child at the low end of the communication scale might not be able to talk, or even to make any sounds, explained the study’s lead author Christine Fountain, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. Those at the other end of the scale “would have a broad vocabulary, understand the meaning of words and use them in appropriate contexts, understand the meaning of story plot and carry on complex conversations,” she explained. © 2012 msnbc.com

Mapping the language minefield for kids with autism

by Alison George Going bananas. Laughing your head off. Phrases that aren't literally true make no sense if you have autism, like Michael Barton Why do people with autism, like yourself, find the English language so confusing? Autistic people think in black and white and therefore interpret everything literally. Ordinary people seem to love using idioms, metaphors and figurative speech, whether to aid communication or simply to make life more interesting, whereas for autistic people they simply make no sense. Tell me about the time your teacher told you to "pull your socks up". I bent down and did just that. Of course the teacher got annoyed and thought I was being cheeky. This is a common problem with children on the spectrum and it is important that teachers understand that the student is simply obeying instructions. At junior school my pencil broke, so the teacher asked me to see if there were any in the cupboard. When I returned, pencil-less, she said "Were there any? " and I said "Yes, lots". What if you saw a sign saying "Passengers are to remain seated at all times"? I have learned that if a sign seems bizarre, it probably doesn't mean what it says, so I watch what other people do. If they are all ignoring the sign by standing up and leaving the bus, then I can assume the sign wasn't meant to be taken literally. What goes through your mind when you hear expressions like "It cost him an arm and a leg?" or "I gave him a piece of my mind"? © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Autism rate rises to 1 in 88 children in US, CDC reports

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff The number of children identified as having an autism spectrum disorder in the United States is soaring, with roughly 1 in 88 being found to have this condition, according to a study released Thursday morning by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new figure reflects a 23 percent increase compared with the autism rate the public health agency released two years ago. During a conference call with reporters, CDC officials acknowledged widespread concern among parents about why the numbers have grown so much. They said increased detection is clearly a major factor driving up the rates, though agency research is being conducted to see what other factors -- genetics or the environment -- play a role. Typically characterized by verbal delays, repetitive behaviors, and social struggles, autism is five times more common among boys than girls -- with 1 in 54 boys identified, according to the new study. It is also found more commonly in white children than black and Hispanic children. Previous reports have shown that autism is one of the few developmental disabilities in which children from higher socio-economic backgrounds are more likely to be identified. But in the new study, the researchers point out that much of the increase in identification of autism spectrum disorder in recent years came from minority communities. The largest rises were among Hispanic and non-Hispanic black children, as well as among children whose autism diagnosis did not include intellectual disability. © 2012 NY Times Co.

Autism: UCSF zeroes in on rare chromosome defect

Erin Allday When her son was diagnosed with a rare chromosome defect three years ago, it was something of a relief for Theresa Mahar. Finally, she had an explanation. Christopher, now 14, had obvious developmental delays and intellectual disabilities. He had behavior problems and struggled in school. He'd been assigned so many diagnoses over the years - almost all of them related to autism - that it was sometimes hard to keep up. Then a genetic test revealed the defect to chromosome 16 - one of the 23 chromosomes that make up every person's DNA - and it explained, perhaps, the cause of Christopher's autism. "It's something to hold on to," Theresa Mahar said. "It's something to blame." Mahar and her family came to San Francisco from Hillsboro, Ore., this week to participate in an unusual study at UCSF - to map in great detail the brains of people who have a defect to chromosome 16. The study is one of the first in which autism researchers are narrowing their focus into one of the few known causes of the disorder. That's important, scientists say, because autism is such a difficult condition to define - the symptoms can vary widely from patient to patient, and the causes are often impossible to determine. Different mechanisms Autism may be a collection of similar conditions, rather than one single disorder, researchers say. That means that studying patients with autism as it's now defined often produces mixed results - the brain scan of a child with one genetic cause of autism may look very different from the scan of an autistic child with no genetic cause. © 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.

Previous Page | Next Page

Links By Chapter:

Links for Keyword: Autism