Cerebellum Plays Bigger Role In Human Thought Than Previously Suspected : Shots - Health News : NPR
▻https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/10/25/660504533/the-underestimated-cerebellum-gains-new-respect-from-brain-scientists
“There is increasing evidence from a variety of fields now that psychiatric diseases from autism spectrum, schizophrenia, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, all have a link to cerebellum,” he says.
So Schmahmann and a few other researchers have begun trying to treat patients with some of these problems by improving the function of this ancient structure in the brain.
]]>Exploring how brains grow could help explain autism
▻https://massivesci.com/articles/autism-brain-causes-growth
In new research, autistic children had larger-than-average amygdalae – and adults had smaller ones
]]>Autistic Prodigies Since “Rain Man” - Issue 56 : Perspective
▻http://nautil.us/issue/56/perspective/autistic-prodigies-since-rain-man
The list of off-the-charts young achievers associated, in retrospect, with Asperger’s syndrome extends a long way back. You may have heard that Bill Gates has been informally diagnosed with it. So, after the fact, has Bobby Fischer, obsessive and unable to look anybody in the eye. The label has been applied to Newton, Mozart, Yeats, and Wittgenstein, too. All of these recruits, of course, grew up well before the autism spectrum disorder—called by some “the engineers’ disease”—claimed a place in the 1994 revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, psychiatry’s authoritative guide. Nearly 20 years later, in 2013, the Asperger’s label was officially dropped. But high-functioning autism had come trailing an aura of precocious genius, along with painful social (...)
]]>AI Predicts Autism From Infant Brain Scans
Scientists of the University of North Carolina have developed an algorithm which can diagnose autism in babies between 6 and 12 months old. Through brain scans it appears the algorithm’s prediction is right about 81% of the time.
▻http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/imaging/ai-predicts-autism-from-infant-brain-scans
#AI #IA #artificial_intelligence #intelligence_artificielle
#deep_learning
#autism
#brain
Anti-Vaccine Activist Says Trump Wants Him to Lead Panel on Immunization Safety - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/politics/anti-vaccine-activist-trump-immunizations.html
A prominent anti-vaccine crusader said on Tuesday that President-elect Donald J. Trump had asked him to lead a new government commission on vaccine safety and scientific integrity — a possibility that spread alarm among medical experts that Mr. Trump could be giving credence to debunked conspiracy theories about the dangers of immunizations.
The vaccine skeptic, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy, said that Mr. Trump, who has repeatedly embraced discredited links between vaccines and autism, had asked him to lead the commission during a meeting with the president-elect at Trump Tower on Tuesday.
A few hours after Mr. Kennedy told reporters about the meeting, Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, said that the president-elect was “exploring the possibility of forming a committee on autism, which affects so many families.” But Ms. Hicks added that no final decisions had been made.
]]>How Odd Behavior in Some Young Horses May Reveal a Cause of Autism - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/how-odd-behavior-in-some-young-horses-may-reveal-a-cause-of-autism
By gently squeezing maladjusted foals, veterinary researcher John Madigan recreates the experience of traveling through the birth canal, lowering the levels of certain neurosteroids and “waking up” the young horses.Joe Proudman / UC DavisAs a toxicologist at the University of California, Davis, Isaac Pessah focuses on how different molecules regulate human brain function and development. Yet when he found himself at the university’s equine research center, watching a troubled newborn foal, he was struck by its eerily familiar clinical symptoms.Horses are prey animals, and like most animals whose chief form of defense is flight, they are up on their feet almost immediately after birth. At first they stagger around in the straw in their stalls, pitching their outsized legs out like tent (...)
]]>Shots In The Dark: Silence on Vaccine
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/shots-in-the-dark-silence-on-vaccine
Following the increase in cases of autism and other immune disorders among some particularly vulnerable people, several recognized specialists are questioning the safety of large-scale...
]]>Map of the Day: The High Cost of Vaccine Hysteria | Mother Jones
▻http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/01/map-day-high-cost-vaccine-hysteria
Use of the MMR vaccine plummeted during the aughts, as vaccine-autism hysteria was spread by charlatans and the ignorati. Needless to say, this did nothing to affect the incidence of autism, but it sure had an effect on measles and mumps. To this day, though, I don’t think any of the vectors of this hysteria have so much as apologized.
measles = rougeole
mumps = oreillons
conséquences : potentiellement très graves
]]>Recherche sur l’autisme : il nous faut des cerveaux (au sens propre) !
En plus, une panne de congélateur nous en a fait perdre un paquet.
Autism scientists seek more brains to aid research | abc11.com
▻http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/health&id=9090312
CHICAGO — Autism scientists are seeking more brain samples for research.
They announced Thursday a new network collecting brain specimens around the country. They say the more they get, the better the chances of finding better ways to treat the developmental disorder.
So far the network has four sites: Mount Sinai medical school in New York, the University of California in Davis, the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, and McLean Hospital near Boston.
A freezer malfunction damaged many of that Harvard-affiliated hospital’s specimens. Neuroscientist Robert Ring of the advocacy group Autism Speaks says the network was planned before that.
Ring says the network has more than 6,000 people signed up to be donors after death. Brains from people with autism and without are needed.
]]>Autistics don’t adjust their behavior to protect their reputations
►http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/10/autistics-dont-adjust-their-behavior-to-protect-their-reputations.ars
Researchers know that people with autism spectrum disorders lack the ability to engage normally in social interactions. However, they don’t know exactly what aspect of cognition is impaired in autistic individuals. One theory is that those with autism don’t have a full grasp of theory-of-mind—that is, they can’t (or don’t) attribute beliefs and feelings to other people. One way this may manifest itself is in one’s social reputation: while most people put great value in how others see them, autistic individuals may not either understand or care about their social reputation.
]]>"Are autistic people lost in space?
ResearchBlogging.org
In one short paper, Elizabeth Pellicano and colleagues claim to demolish Simon Baron Cohen’s systemizing account of autism. They also conclude that autistics’ strong visual search and probabilistic learning abilities fail in large-scale space, ergo in the real world.
The press release starts by declaring that autistic children “lack visual skills required for independence” and does not exaggerate the claims in the paper, which merit a lot of scrutiny. So bear with me, this is not going to be short. First what they did (and didn’t do), then what they found, then what it means."
►http://autismcrisis.blogspot.com/2011/01/are-autistic-people-lost-in-space.html
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