Unlock Autism

To understand the meaning of a conversation, kids automatically do what adults do – besides processing the meaning of words, they unconsciously ‘read’ the expression on a person’s face and listen to their tone of voice, then integrate that information with the context at hand to discern meaning, be it humor, anger, irony or straightforwardness.

Individuals with autism typically don’t do this. They often miss the subtle meanings conveyed by a person’s face and tone of voice, and thus have trouble determining the communicative intent of others. Neuroimaging studies have backed this up, showing that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) – including autism, pervasive developmental disorder and Asperger’s syndrome – show reduced activity in the regions of the brain that respond to such cues.

But what if those brain regions could be trained to respond appropriately” In a report in the current issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry and currently online, UCLA researchers did just that. Providing ASD children with explicit instructions to pay more attention to facial expressions and tone of voice elicited an increased response in the medial prefrontal cortex, part of the brain’s network for understanding the intentions of others.

“That’s significant. The fact that you can ‘normalize’ activity in this region in the ASD group by directing their attention to these important social cues clearly indicates there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this region in the autistic brain,” said Mirella Dapretto, associate professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and a member of the UCLA Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center. Dapretto co-authored the study with her former graduate student Ting Wang, who is now a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

“This is a very positive thing,” Dapretto said, “because these findings have implications for future interventions” they suggest that you could train the autistic brain to make use of the information conveyed by the human face and voice to successfully navigate social interactions

Autism is a complex neurobiological disorder of development that affects one of every 150 children, impairing communication and social skills. ASDs encompass a broad spectrum of disorders that range from mild to severe.

The authors had two goals in mind with their study. One was to examine the neural circuitry in the brain that underlies the problems ASD children face in interpreting communicative intent. The other was to determine whether explicit instructions to pay attention to facial expressions and tone of voice would elicit more normal patterns of brain activity in these children.

While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 18 ASD boys between the ages of 7 and 17, as well as a control group of 18 typically developing (TD) boys, viewed cartoon drawings of children in conversational settings while listening to short vignettes that ended with a potentially ironic remark. Researchers found that, compared with the TD control group, the ASD children had reduced activity in two areas of the brain – the medial prefrontal cortex and right superior temporal gyrus. But when the researchers gave both groups explicit instructions to pay attention to the speaker’s facial expression and tone of voice, only the ASD children showed a significant increase in activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.

“The typically developing kids recognized and interpreted these cues automatically when trying to infer if a speaker’s remark was sincere or sarcastic, so their brains were already responding appropriately,” said Dapretto. “But not so with the ASD kids, who did not show activity in this area when specific instructions weren’t provided. This is the first study to show that you can normalize activity in a key region of the so-called ‘social brain’ in individuals with autism by simply directing their attention to these important social cues.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Other authors of the study included Susan S. Lee and Marian Sigman. The research was funded by the National Alliance for Autism Research, the Cure Autism Now Foundation, the UC Davis M.I.N.D. Institute, and grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.

The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA is an interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior, including the genetic, biological, behavioral and sociocultural underpinnings of normal behavior and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders. In addition to conducting fundamental research, the institute faculty seeks to develop effective treatments for neurological and psychiatric disorders, improve access to mental health services and shape national health policy regarding neuropsychiatric disorders.

Contact: Mark Wheeler
University of California – Los Angeles

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Next time you lose your car keys and enlist the family to help you search, try a little experiment. After your spouse searches an area, go and look in the same place. It will likely feel strange, even irritating to both of you – and that’s because you may be fighting an ancient, hard-wired, human behaviour pattern.

The behavioural phenomenon is called ‘inhibition of return’ and for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors it made a lot of sense. As Dr. Tim Welsh explains, “This behaviour likely developed through evolution to increase search efficiency. Returning to search an area that someone else has already searched doesn’t make a lot of sense from a survival point of view because they’ve either found the food and eaten it, or there’s no food there.”

Inhibition of return has been well-documented over the years, but Welsh is interested in measuring exactly how the actions of another individual affect our own, and whether people with autism react differently than the rest of the population. To test this Welsh, a professor in the Faculties of Kinesiology and Medicine, came up with a unique and elegant experiment that uses some cutting-edge technology.

In Welsh’s set-up, two subjects sit across from each other wearing, liquid crystal goggles. They are told to reach for a lighted target in front of them.

Welsh’s previous work has shown that if we see someone else touching an area, we are much slower to move there, but Welsh wanted to see how much of another person’s actions we need to be aware of, to affect our own. Welsh’s crystal goggles become opaque allowing the subject to see only a fraction of the other person’s movement.

He discovered that as social beings, we are so sensitive to another’s actions that just the suggestion of a movement was enough to trigger the inhibition of return effect.

So what happens when the individual doesn’t really recognize, or can’t recognize the actions of another individual” Sadly this is often the case for people with autism, a complex neurological, developmental disability that affects over 50,000 Canadians. A current theory of autism is that individuals with the disorder have a problem with their mirror neuron system.

“In normal individuals if you see someone throwing a ball, your mind will ‘mirror’ those actions to make it seem as if you are throwing it yourself,” Welsh explains. “The theory is that a person with autism may not be able to mirror the actions of other individuals. So in our experimental set-up you would expect them to be unaffected by the actions of another person and this is exactly what we have found to this point.”

Welsh believes his research will advance our understanding of autism and the mirror neuron system – perhaps leading to more effective intervention and treatment of a condition that seems to be growing at an alarming rate. “What I think is very interesting,” says Welsh, “is that the same experimental set-up can effectively be used to test two theories, and in many ways the two groups we are working with – a typically-developing population and an autistic population – provide a control for the other group. I’m very excited about this research.”

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Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release.
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Dr. Welsh is currently looking for people between the ages of 14 and 25 to participate in his experiments. He is looking for with people autism and people from the typically-developing population.

Contact: Don McSwiney
University of Calgary

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This reminds me of the scene in Superman when they put baby Superman in the Astro pod and he listens to all sorts of knowledge recordings- physics, math, history, etc. When he lands in an Iowa cornfield, he is an absolute expert. I have often thought about creating a short film series showing “good” behavior and social skills, after all the use of video has been used to help people break bad habits for years. (After you see yourself chewing on your nails in public, one will generally become horrified and cease to chew on them again). Kind of the same principle here and best of all with todays advances in digital photography, one can film and edit on our home computers, with ease. Write me if you need some tips. This is very encouraging below. Learned behavior from ourselves…

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., April 2 (UPI) — Videos showing exemplary behaviors help children with autism spectrum disorders develop social and living skills, say two Indiana University studies.

One study in the journal Exceptional Children examined 23 published studies of video modeling and/or video self-modeling, in which children are shown footage of themselves performing desired behaviors. Both types of video modeling were effective in increasing the performance of desired behaviors in three key areas.

Another study in the School Psychology Review examined whether video self-modeling techniques could increase the social engagement of two preschool children with autism spectrum disorders.

The children viewed videos edited to show only exemplary footage of themselves interacting with classroom peers. After viewing the two-minute edited video clips, the researchers found the videos not only effective in increasing social interaction, but also easy to implement and minimally disruptive of teacher duties and class activities.

However, a bigger sample size is needed to confirm the results. For more visit www.upi.com

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