We just received an email in the community mailbox, announcing phase three of the AASPIRE Healthcare Tooklit project. The purpose of the project is to develop a toolkit that autistics can use, with the cooperation of our healthcare providers, to facilitate communication across the neurotype divide and thus make doctor visits less harrowing. ( Read more... )

"Bacteria-boost fixes symptoms of autism in mice ( Read more... )

I saw this mentioned on WowInsider today (and semi-regularly follow her blog being a resto druid myself in the game), and thought this might be something that interests some of the community here. Basically it turns out when she's not blogging about how to be an awesome resto druid, she's working as a researcher at the Laboratory of Developmental ( Read more... )

Well, first I'll post the video, which I think most of you will enjoy. She's mostly just talking about understanding people with autism and Asperger's, and about half of it is about girls/women on the spectrum.

Click to view

At one point she started talking about...ok, I'm going to butcher this, but she started talking about how girls have a tendency to present ( Read more... )

Recently I read some interesting papers about empathy and I'll post more details if folks here are interested.

Guess what? (meant sarcastically, may not come over e-mail well.) Drumroll please...despite what Simon Baron-Cohen or others say, aspies are empathetic -- at least in some ways.

( More about empathy... )

Hi all ( Read more... )

Steven Kapp, a colleague of mine who's on the Spectrum and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Education at UCLA, is conducting a survey on autism and internet use for one of his research projects. He asked me to spread the word and to encourage people to take the survey. He's interested in responses from people on the spectrum (diagnosis by someone with ( Read more... )

A 1998 study that unleashed a major health scare by linking childhood autism to a triple vaccine was "an elaborate fraud," the British Medical Journal (BMJ) said.

“The BMJ says Sunday Times investigative journalist Brian Deer has "unearthed clear evidence of falsification".”

Edit: The BMJ article, and A BMJ editorial on the matter(xposted ( Read more... )

http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/11/04/genetic-changes-tied-to-autism/20533.html

The fMRI images excited the scientists - and confirmed their suspicions.
Regardless of their diagnosis, the children carrying the risk variant showed a disjointed brain. The frontal lobe was over-connected to itself and poorly connected to the rest of the brain. ( Read more... )

I'm interested about people's opinions of the Autism Research Institute and their project Defeat Autism Now! I'd never heard of them before this week ( Read more... )