The newly reconstituted and reorganized Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee has released their strategic plan for 2016-2017. To read the full document, click here.
The IACC publishes the new strategic plan for autism research
In a new blog post, ASF CSO Alycia Halladay explains the newest research in understanding the brains of people with autism.
Autism Science Foundation grantees and fellows will be giving several presentations throughout the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in San Francisco this week. If you will be at IMFAR, see details below so you can attend their presentations. If not, see below anyway to learn about the great work ASF grantees and fellows are doing. We will be posting on Facebook and tweeting all throughout the conference!
Thursday, May 11th
Karen Chenausky
Session Title: Communication and Language
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Predictors of Speech Improvement in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder
Christine Ochoa
Session Title: Animal Models
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Loss of KCTD13 Decreases Hippocampal Synaptic Transmission Via the Small Gtpase RhoA
Dara Chan
Session Title: Adult Outcome: Medical, Cognitive, Behavioral
Session Date/Time: Thursday, May 11, 2017, 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM
Poster Title: Examining Environmental Predictors of Social Participation and Service Use for Adults with ASD Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS)
Friday, May 12th
Jacqueline Barkoski
Session Title: Epidemiology
Session Date/Time: Friday, May 12, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: In Utero Pyrethroid Pesticide Exposure and Child Cognitive Development from 6 to 36 Months in the Marbles Longitudinal Cohort
Saturday, May 13th
Tychele Turner
Session Title: Gene Discovery in ASD
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 1:15 PM-2:05 PM
Presentation Title: Genome Sequencing of 2,064 Genomes from 516 Simplex Families with Autism
Oral Presentation Start Time: 1:15 PM
Donna Werling (on behalf of Stephan Sanders)
Session Title: Gene Discovery in ASD
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 1:15 PM-2:05 PM
Presentation Title: Interaction Between Human Sexual Dimorphism and ASD Neurobiology
Oral Presentation Start Time: 1:39 PM
Shweta Ghai
Session Title: Early Development (< 48 months)
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 12:00 PM – 1:40 PM
Poster Title: Physiological Measurements of Voice Quality in Children with Autism Using Electroglottography in Relation to Clinical Assessment Outcome
Aarti Nair
Session Title: Early Brain Development
Session Date/Time: Saturday, May 13, 2017, 2:10 PM-3:00 PM
Presentation Title: Altered Early Development of Resting-State Network Properties in Infants at High Risk for Autism Spectrum Disorder
Oral Presentation Start Time: 2:10 PM
This week the Infant Brain Imaging Study, or IBIS, published it’s second study on the emergence of changes in the brains of individuals with autism. While red flags for autism can be seen early, a diagnosis of autism is not typically made until after 24 months of age. Using a baby sibling research design, scientists showed increases in the size of certain areas of the brain between 6-12 months. This opens up opportunities for even earlier diagnosis of ASD in the future. Also, a group at Stanford shows the emergence and disappearance of co-morbid symptoms in autism, such as epilepsy, schizophrenia and ADHD, which are dependent on sex and age. Together, these studies show that autism begins very, very early, and symptoms and behavioral and biological features change over time. Click here to listen to this week’s podcast.
Individual research studies are great. But even better is when someone takes these studies and puts them together to see if one study shows the same thing another does, and if they do, then is the effect size consistent? Sometimes you can only do this by going old school and pooling the data from the individual studies. This is especially helpful in determining the effectiveness of different interventions. This week, Dr. Matt Lerner and his colleagues at the Social Competence & Treatment Lab at Stony Brook University published a meta analysis of group social skills interventions. They put together well-designed studies and asked: Do they work? Are they better than getting nothing at all? To find out, click here listen to this week’s ASF podcast with Dr. Alycia Halladay.
Even though more than 20% of people with autism have little or no language, research into ways to help this group have really been lacking. Several efforts to not just understand the abilities and disabilities of this group started a few years ago and we are just starting to hear about what works and what doesn’t work to improve communication in those with little or no language. This podcast summarizes the evidence, which points to combinations of things, rather than things in isolation, and peeks in on ways in which interventions can be better directed and made more effective. Scientists at Rutgers University—Newark, UCLA, and Boston University contributed to the research discussed this week by Dr. Alycia Halladay.