By Tiffany Hsu Amazon has removed the online listings for two books that claim to contain cures for autism, a move that follows recent efforts by several social media sites to limit the availability of anti-vaccination and other pseudoscientific material. The books, “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” and “Fight Autism and Win,” which had previously been listed for sale in Amazon’s marketplace, were not available on Wednesday. The company confirmed that the listings had been removed, but declined to discuss why or whether similar books would be taken down in the future. Several such books were still listed on Wednesday. In an article published this week, Wired magazine noted that Amazon is crowded with titles promoting unproven treatments for autism that include “sex, yoga, camel milk, electroconvulsive therapy and veganism.” There is no cure for autism spectrum disorder, but there are medications that can help address associated symptoms like high energy levels and depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has found that as many as a third of parents with an autistic child have tried treatments that most pediatricians do not recommend, and that up to 10 percent may be using potentially dangerous tactics. The books that were listed on Amazon were both written more than five years ago and have together generated more than 600 customer reviews. “Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism” recommends that autistic children drink and bathe in chlorine dioxide, a compound often referred to as “Miracle Mineral Solution.” In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration described it as “a potent bleach used for stripping textiles and industrial water treatment” that “can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and symptoms of severe dehydration.” Representative Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, wrote an open letter this month to Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, chiding the company about the failure of its algorithms to “distinguish quality information from misinformation or misleading information.” © 2019 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 26033 - Posted: 03.14.2019

Laura Sanders Young nerve cells derived from people with autism are precocious, growing bigger and developing sooner than cells taken from people without autism, a new study shows. The results, described January 7 in Nature Neuroscience, hint that in some cases nerve cells veer off course early in brain development to ultimately cause the disorder. As a proxy of brain growth, researchers led by Simon Schafer of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., transformed skin cells from people with and without autism into stem cells that then developed into nerve cells in the lab. Along the way, the scientists monitored the cells’ growth and the behavior of their genes. Compared with cells derived from five people without autism, cells from eight people with autism grew bigger, with longer and more elaborate branches, the researchers found. Three-dimensional balls called organoids made of the autism-derived cells were bulkier, too. In addition to this physical development, a group of genes important for brain development switched on sooner. Trouble in the autism-derived cells, however, actually began a bit earlier, just as the cells were on the cusp of becoming nerve cells. At the neural stem cell stage, certain spots of these cells’ chromatin — tightly packed genetic material — were more open and accessible than they should have been, an unfolding that can lead to abnormally active genes. The results show that open chromatin “can have major effects on neuronal development,” says neuroscientist David Amaral of the University of California, Davis. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25856 - Posted: 01.11.2019

By Jane E. Brody Dr. Gayatri Devi’s patient, a 55-year-old former headmistress, had good reason to be distraught. The woman had a yearlong history of progressive memory loss and behavioral problems and was referred to Dr. Devi, a neurologist, with a possible diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia. As Dr. Devi recounted in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, the woman’s once prodigious memory had seriously deteriorated and she’d become increasingly irritable. She had difficulty organizing tasks, keeping track of belongings, setting goals, making plans and seeing them through. Yet the results of medical and neurological tests and brain scans were normal. Noting that the woman had gone through menopause a year earlier, Dr. Devi traced her symptoms to the decline in estrogen stimulation of the brain that occurs in all women at menopause with varying effects. Some are more sensitive to falling estrogen levels than others. With a likely diagnosis of menopause-related cognitive impairment, the doctor prescribed hormone-replacement therapy. Within 15 months, the woman’s behavioral symptoms had disappeared and her learning ability and memory were back to normal. She was able to complete a demanding graduate program and assume a new leadership position in education. This woman’s case was admittedly extreme, but Dr. Devi told me that “60 percent of women go through menopause-related cognitive impairment” that, when serious enough to be brought to medical attention, is too often misdiagnosed as “mild cognitive impairment,” a precursor to dementia. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25793 - Posted: 12.17.2018

By Lina Zeldovich, It was 1924 when the 12-year-old boy was brought to the Moscow clinic for an evaluation. By all accounts, he was different from his peers. Other people did not interest him much, and he preferred the company of adults to that of children his own age. He never played with toys: He had taught himself to read by age 5 and spent his days reading everything he could instead. Thin and slouching, the boy moved slowly and awkwardly. He also suffered from anxiety and frequent stomachaches. At the clinic, a gifted young doctor, Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva, saw the boy. Caring and attentive, she observed him with a keen eye, noting that he was “highly intelligent” and liked to engage in philosophical discussions. By way of a diagnosis, she described him as “an introverted type, with an autistic proclivity into himself.” ‘Autistic’ was a relatively new adjective in psychiatry at the time. About a decade earlier, Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler had coined the term to describe the social withdrawal and detachment from reality often seen in children with schizophrenia. Sukhareva’s characterization came nearly two decades before Austrian doctors Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger published what have long been considered to be the first clinical accounts of autism. At first, Sukhareva used ‘autistic’ in the same way Bleuler did—but as she started to see other children with this trait, she decided to try to characterize it more fully. Over the course of the following year, she identified five more boys with what she described as “autistic tendencies.” All five also showed a preference for their own inner world, yet each had his own peculiarities or talents. One was an extraordinarily gifted violinist but struggled socially; another had an exceptional memory for numbers but could not recognize faces; yet another had imaginary friends who lived in the fireplace. None were popular with other children, she noted, and some saw peer interaction as useless: “They are too loud,” one boy said. “They hinder my thinking.” © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25668 - Posted: 11.12.2018

Ian Sample In daylight hours there is so little melatonin in the bloodstream that it is barely detectable. But when the sun goes down, the eyes sense the failing light, and part of the hippocampus signals the pineal gland, a pea-sized lump of tissue near the centre of the brain, to ramp up production of the sleep-promoting hormone. Levels of melatonin rise sharply from 9pm, inducing feelings of sleepiness, and remain high until the following morning. Much of the research on prescribing melatonin for children with sleep problems has focused on those with disorders such as autism, ADHD and intellectual disability (ID). For good reason too: sleeping difficulties are far more common and pronounced in children with neurodevelopmental or psychiatric disorders. For them, small doses of melatonin can be safe and effective. In one recent study, researchers from Southampton University monitored the sleep patterns of 45 children with autism, ADHD, or ID, and found that a third fell asleep faster, slept longer, and woke less frequently at night on low dose (2.5-3mg) melatonin. Above 6mg per night there was little extra benefit. A poor night’s sleep can be caused by any number of factors, but there is good evidence that screen time matters, whether it is TV, computer, tablet or mobile phone. A recent review of scientific papers on the issue found that 90% linked screen time to poor sleep in schoolchildren and adolescents. Part of the problem is obvious: being online at bedtime eats into the hours left for sleep, and it hardly helps people to wind down for the night. But glowing screens can affect sleep directly by suppressing the natural production of melatonin. Using an iPad on full brightness for two hours, for example, has been shown to suppress melatonin levels. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25640 - Posted: 11.03.2018

by Lena Simon Four limbs. Warm blood. A love for cheese. And a hatred for infidelity. Although this may sound characteristic of the average Wisconsinite, the previous is actually also true for the California mouse. A recent University of Wisconsin news release revealed research that shows California pair-bonded mice become increasingly vocal after infidelity experiences. Experiments were designed to test how communication changes after mice have been given the opportunity to be “unfaithful” to their bonded mate. The California deer mouse, or Peromyscus californicus, is part of only 3 to 5 percent of mammal species that practice any kind of monogamy, per research from the National Science Foundation. At UW, research on the California mouse is ongoing. Josh Pultorak, a biology instructor at Madison Area Technical College and UW’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, led this research. He and his collaborators identified several types of sounds that the California mouse makes, all of which are ultrasonic — unable to be heard by the human ear unless slowed down to about 5 percent of their original speed. These include chirps — or “sweeps,” which are usually more peaceful sounds — and barks, which indicate aggression. Microbes in your gut could hold cure to diabetesThere are millions of microbes living in your gut. They help you digest and access nutrients your own organs would Read… The Badger Herald, 1995 - 2018

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25637 - Posted: 11.02.2018

By Alycia Halladay Click-worthy health and science headlines are an essential currency in today’s media world. When they pertain to autism, they might include phrases like “groundbreaking trial,” “offer hope” or “game-changer.” But for people with autism and their families, these headlines and the research news stories they highlight often bring false hope, confusion—or worse. There is something about autism, a disorder that remains widely misunderstood, that seems to encourage the promulgation of news coverage about potential “breakthroughs” and unorthodox treatment approaches. A nearly constant stream of headlines touts promising new findings that supposedly help explain the origins of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), improve our understanding of its key features or reveal novel ways to treat the symptoms. This attention is a mixed blessing. It can encourage talented scientists to design research to better understand autism. It also generates support for advocacy efforts and research funding, and I have seen it motivate people to participate in research studies. However, there is a dark side to this almost insatiable interest in autism science news: it has created an environment that encourages media hype of early, preliminary findings, with headlines that are tantalizing but not always accurate. The hype machine also too often promotes mediocre or even bad science, which ultimately puts people with autism at risk. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25635 - Posted: 11.02.2018

By George Musser, The forest is still—until, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a butterfly flutter into view. At first it is barely perceptible, but as I watch the butterfly more intently, the trees around it darken and the insect grows brighter. The more I marvel at it, the more marvelous it becomes, making it impossible for me to look away. Before long the entire forest recedes, and the butterfly explodes into a red starburst, like a fireworks display. Everything goes dark. Then, dozens of white dots swarm around me. On my left, they are just dots. On my right, they leave long trails of spaghetti-like light. The contrast makes me acutely conscious that the present is never experienced as a mathematical instant; it has some duration, and the perception of that can vary with context. The sensation evaporates as soon as I take off my headset. This immersive virtual-reality (VR) experience was a preliminary look at Beholder, an art installation at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in September that sought to recreate how autistic people perceive the world. It is now on display at the gallery that commissioned it, Birmingham Open Media. The project’s creator, Matt Clark, has a severely autistic 15-year-old son, Oliver. “He can’t talk; his behaviors are extremely challenging,” says Clark, creative director of United Visual Artists, an art and design group based in London. Clark built Beholder so he and others could see the world through his son’s eyes. He collaborated with artists who either are on the spectrum or have family members who are. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism; Vision
Link ID: 25621 - Posted: 10.27.2018

By Elizabeth Pennisi One of biology’s enduring mysteries is how some animals—from humans to honey bees—became so social. Now, a study suggests that, in the inconspicuous sweat bee, changes to the expression of a single gene could determine which bees are solitary and which are social. The gene, which has previously been linked to autism in humans, has also been connected to social behavior in animals like mice and locusts. The new discovery puts scientists one step closer toward demonstrating a common evolutionary basis for social behavior. “People have been taking about the genetics of sociality for years,” says Bernard Crespi, an evolutionary biologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, who was not involved with the work. “Finding this gene is a real watershed for the field.” Sweat bees don’t have the same massive colonies as honey bees, whose hundreds of workers care for and protect a single egg-laying queen. But the tiny, gentle bees have some interesting social arrangements: In some groups and species, workers help a reproducing queen, as honey bees do; in other groups, sweat bee females tend their own broods. This difference has led scientists to think sweat bees may hold the key to understanding how more complex insect societies began to evolve. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25592 - Posted: 10.18.2018

Laura Sanders WASHINGTON — As the number of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder increases, so too has research on the complex and poorly understood disorder. With powerful genetic tools, advanced brain-imaging methods and large groups of children to study, the field is poised to make big contributions in understanding — and potentially treating — autism. Neuroscientist Kevin Pelphrey, who is formerly of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., but has recently moved to the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, studies autism’s beginnings. He described some of his findings about the link between brain development and the disorder on October 15 at a meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing. Here are some of the key points Pelphrey made on how autism may get its start in the developing brain, how the disorder is different between boys and girls, and how large, long-term studies of children with autism might yield clues about the condition. What causes autism spectrum disorder? For most cases, no one knows. There’s likely no single cause — environmental and genetic risk factors work in combination. In some children, rare mutations in key genes have been linked to the disorder. More commonly, many genetic changes, each with a small influence on overall risk, may increase a child’s likelihood of developing the disorder. With the number of autism diagnoses growing, partly due to better detection, researchers are looking at potential factors beyond genetics, such as parents’ age, premature birth and maternal obesity. When does the disorder begin? |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 20

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25584 - Posted: 10.17.2018

Ashley P. Taylor Researchers have long believed that autism spectrum disorder is caused by some sort of imbalance between excitation and inhibition in the brain. In particular, studies have suggested that something is unusual about signaling controlled by the inhibitory neurotransmitter, γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), whether it be lower levels of GABA or the receptor it binds to. But a study published last week (October 3) in Science Translational Medicine, which zeroed in on GABA receptor levels, finds no evidence that their abundance is any different between people with autism and people without. “We were unable to identify that individuals with autism had differences in GABAA receptor binding,” says Declan Murphy, a psychiatrist who studies brain development and neuropsychiatric disorders at King’s College London, who co-led the work with the Karolinska Institute’s Jacqueline Borg. “That’s important because it had previously been reported that they do have abnormalities in GABAA receptor binding, number one, and number two, it’s important because GABAA is a target of a number of pharmaceutical companies in terms of developing new treatments,” Murphy adds. GABAA is the most common form of the neurotransmitter in human brains, and since the early 2000s, reports have been piling up that associate deficits in the production of GABA or in GABA receptors to autism. For instance, studies in postmortem brains of people who had autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and of neurotypical subjects, led by Gene Blatt, a neuroscientist at the Hussman Institute for Autism in Baltimore, had found that people who had ASD had lower levels of the enzyme that makes GABA. Blatt’s investigations also found that people with ASD had lower GABAA receptor levels in the cingulate cortex and hippocampus. And an in vivo study by another group had detected reduced GABAA levels in the brains of children with ASD. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist.

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25579 - Posted: 10.16.2018

By Ingrid Wickelgren It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday and Rebecca "Becky" Audette is already in bed, tucked under a polka-dotted lavender comforter. Dark purple velour curtains with butterfly ties hang over the lavender walls of her bedroom. Purple has been Becky’s favorite color since she was a toddler, before she was diagnosed with autism at age 7. Now, the young woman functions at about the level of a 4-year-old. “Am I going to bed? I want to go to bed,” she insists. Becky lives with her mother, Pamela Peirce; brother, Jason Audette; and Jason’s wife in a gray-and-white colonial-style house that was Peirce’s childhood home in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. When Peirce was a child, her extended family owned five houses along this quarter-mile stretch of road, dirt back then. Peirce and her grown children are the last of the clan to occupy the street. It’s paved now, but the house still sports features of an earlier time: two-pronged electrical outlets, a VCR, inherited furniture. It also offers a hopeful vision of the future. Becky bears the markings of an invasive, high-tech treatment under her purple plaid pajamas: two linear scars, each about 3 inches long, over her clavicle, and two circular bulges protruding ever so slightly from her chest. Beneath these marks lies the power source for an implant that stimulates key parts of her brain. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25454 - Posted: 09.15.2018

By Frankie Schembri For many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), recognizing and responding to eye contact, body language, and tone of voice is a major challenge. Improving those social skills can take lots of work—putting a strain on caregivers with limited time, resources, and money for therapy. Now, a study shows that just 30 days with an in-home robot that provides social feedback can dramatically improve a child’s interactions with others. Researchers have long known that robots—and games with automated feedback—can change the behavior of children with autism, at least in the short term. Such interactions have been shown to help children pick up on social cues, such as making sustained eye contact, that they might have missed from their caregivers. But translating these new skills into better person-to-person interactions may require longer and more intensive training, and few studies have been large enough—or long enough—to show significant, long-lasting improvements. So Brian Scassellati, a robotics expert and cognitive scientist at Yale University, put together an experiment that gave children a long-term relationship with their bots, one they could share with their families. His team provided 12 families with a tablet computer loaded with social games and a modified version of a commercially sold robot called Jibo, which was programmed to follow along with the games and provide feedback. “As a roboticist, that was one of the most frightening things in the world. Leaving the robots there and hoping they would do the things we’d programmed them to do,” Scassellati says. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism; Robotics
Link ID: 25368 - Posted: 08.23.2018

Sara Reardon Mothers with high levels of the pesticide DDT in their blood during pregnancy are more likely to bear children who develop autism, according to a study of blood samples from more than one million pregnant women in Finland. The World Health Organization estimates that globally, one in 160 children has autism. Any case of autism is likely due to a number of factors, including genetics and other environmental exposures. Although the authors stress that the findings do not prove that autism is caused by DDT — whose use has been banned in many countries for decades over concerns about its effects on wildlife— it is the first such association using a direct measure of exposure to the pesticide. Researchers who investigate links between environment and disease say that further studies are needed to determine the mechanism, if any, by which DDT exposure could trigger autism. The study, published on 16 August in the American Journal of Psychiatry1, also examined mothers’ exposure to another set of chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and found no association between these substances and autism. That finding deepens questions about whether or how DDT might be linked to autism. © 2018 Springer Nature Limited

Keyword: Autism; Neurotoxins
Link ID: 25346 - Posted: 08.17.2018

By Nicole M. Baran When Kathleen Morrison stepped onto the stage to present her research on the effects of stress on the brains of mothers and infants, she was nearly seven and a half months pregnant. The convergence was not lost on Morrison, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, nor on her audience. If there ever was a group of scientists that would be both interested in her findings and unfazed by her late-stage pregnancy, it was this one. Nearly 90 percent were women. It is uncommon for any field of science to be dominated by women. In 2015, women received only 34.4 percent of all STEM degrees.1 Even though women now earn more than half of PhDs in biology-related disciplines, only 36 percent of assistant professors and 18 percent of full professors in biology-related fields are women.2 Yet, 70 percent of the speakers at this year’s meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD), where Morrison spoke, were women. Women make up 67 percent of the regular members and 81 percent of trainee members of OSSD, which was founded by the Society for Women’s Health Research. Similarly, 68 percent of the speakers at the annual meeting of the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) in 2017 were women. In the field of behavioral neuroendocrinology, 58 percent of professors and 62 percent of student trainees are women. The leadership of both societies also skews female, and the current and recent past presidents of both societies are women. It wasn’t always this way. As Elizabeth Adkins-Regan, a professor emerita at Cornell University and the recent past president of the SBN puts it: “The whole field was founded by guys!” “It was not a women’s field in the beginning,” agrees C. Sue Carter, director of the Kinsey Institute and professor of biology at Indiana University. © 2018 NautilusThink Inc

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25341 - Posted: 08.17.2018

by Lindsey Bever New research has shown that a common childhood vaccination given to pregnant women does not put their children at any increased risk of autism. A Kaiser Permanente study published Monday in the journal Pediatrics found no association between the prenatal Tdap (for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis, also known as whooping cough) vaccine and autism spectrum disorder when looking at tens of thousands of children in the hospital system. It is the latest in a long line of studies showing that there is no link between vaccines and autism. Despite the abundant scientific evidence, a persistent conspiracy theory has misled some parents into fearing vaccines. “If any woman had any hesitancy, she can be reassured,” Tracy Becerra-Culqui, lead author and postdoctoral research fellow with Kaiser Permanente Southern California's department of research and evaluation, told The Washington Post. When not vaccinated, she said, “the risk of getting whooping cough is greater than any perceived risk of harm to the baby, so it should be a no-brainer to accept the vaccine.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American College of Nurse-Midwives encourage expectant mothers to get the Tdap vaccine in the third trimester of pregnancy to protect babies from bacterial infections that can be fatal for infants. © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Autism; Neuroimmunology
Link ID: 25332 - Posted: 08.15.2018

By Jessica Wright, Boosting levels of the chemical messenger serotonin makes mice that model autism more social, according to a study published in Nature. The study suggests the approach may do the same in people with autism. It also offers an explanation for why antidepressants do not ease autism traits: They may increase serotonin levels too slowly to be effective. The researchers used a technique that rapidly increases serotonin levels in the nucleus accumbens, a brain region that mediates social reward. “Somehow, the release of serotonin in the nucleus accumbens really plays an important role in enhancing sociability,” says lead researcher Robert Malenka, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University in California. “The simple hypothesis is it makes the social interaction more reinforcing.” Decades of research have suggested a connection between serotonin and autism. About 10 years ago, this led researchers to test antidepressants, which increase serotonin levels by blocking its reabsorption into neurons, as a treatment for autism. However, in several trials, antidepressants such as fluoxetine (Prozac) proved ineffective at easing the condition’s features. The new study suggests that a drug that rapidly activates serotonin receptors would be a more effective way of treating the condition. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25323 - Posted: 08.13.2018

Sukanya Charuchandra R. Liu et al., “Perception of social interaction compresses subjective duration in an oxytocin-dependent manner,” eLife, 7:e32100, 2018. External stimuli can affect our perception of time. Researchers in China set out to test whether a person’s social skills and perception of social interactions alters their sense of time. Subjects viewed two motion sequences depicting two humans composed of dots of light. The first video clip showed sociable behavior between the figures, such as passing an object, while the second showed no interaction—the figures moved independently of each other. The subjects had to indicate which clip appeared to last longer. Overall, volunteers found the clips with communicative behavior to be shorter, even when that wasn’t true. This “temporal compression effect” was not as pronounced in less sociable test subjects, as measured by their Autism Spectrum Quotient, a questionnaire-based assessment that determines where people fall on the neurotypical or autistic scale. “It not only highlights the idiosyncrasy of subjective time but also demonstrates that our perception of the world (something as basic as time) is ingrained with our personality traits,” writes coauthor Wen Zhou of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Psychology in an email to The Scientist. © 1986 - 2018 The Scientist

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Autism
Link ID: 25306 - Posted: 08.08.2018

By Daniela Lamas Incompletely understood at best, after more than a century of false starts and research gains. So we learn in “Aroused,” an eye-opening new book that traces the history of endocrinology through a sequence of crisp, meticulously researched, and often surprisingly funny tales from the turn of the 20th century to today. Though hormones have entered common parlance — we have growth hormone and sex hormones and hormone replacement therapy — it was not always this way. Randi Hutter Epstein, an accomplished author who has a medical degree and a master’s of public health, illuminates more than a century of false starts and research gains as she explains the ways these chemical messengers control the daily work of our bodies. At the same time, she leaves us wondering how much of our current understanding of hormones is in fact “true” and how much may ultimately be disproved. This is a novel contribution. While most of the literature on hormones has been confined to medical text or limited to a single hormone (estrogen, for example), Epstein’s approach is wide-ranging. Consider this story. The year was 1924, and two teenagers in Chicago bludgeoned a younger boy to death. The new field of endocrinology was exploding at the time, and their lawyers proposed a provocative theory to avoid the death penalty: Hormones were at fault. After extensive X-rays, interviews, and measures of metabolism, doctors testified that the teenagers had severely impaired hormonal glands and had committed the grisly murder under the influence of hormones gone awry. They were sentenced to life in prison. Copyright 2018 Undark

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 25262 - Posted: 07.28.2018

By Ceylan Yeginsu LONDON — Dim the lights. Silence the piped-in music. Turn down the checkout beeps. For an hour on Saturdays, a British supermarket chain is introducing a weekly “quieter hour” aimed at helping people with autism have a better shopping experience by easing sensory overload. The move by the supermarket, Morrisons, which begins on Saturday and runs from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., has been welcomed by the National Autistic Society, which says that even small changes can make a big difference in the lives of people with autism and their families. “Around 700,000 people are on the autism spectrum in the U.K.,” Tom Purser, of the National Autistic Society, said in an email. “This means they see, hear and feel the world differently to other people, often in a more intense way, which can make shopping a real struggle.” Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people communicate and relate to others and how they experience the world around them. More than 60 percent of people with autism avoid shops, and 79 percent say they feel socially isolated, according to figures published by the society. Morrisons’s effort is part of the National Autistic Society’s “Too Much Information” campaign: Last year, more than 5,000 retailers across Britain participated in “Autism Hour.” The society hopes to expand the initiative. Morrisons, the fourth-largest supermarket chain in Britain, said in a statement on its website, “Listening to customers, we found that one in five had a friend or family member with autism and many liked the idea of being able to shop in more comfort at 9-10 a.m. on a Saturday.” In the statement, Angela Gray, part of a community group that builds ties with the supermarket, is quoted as saying: “I was involved in the initial trial as my son is autistic, and we found that these changes made a real difference. The trial showed there is a need for a quieter shopping experience for some customers.” © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25230 - Posted: 07.20.2018