autistic children

Autistic children use alternative keyboard to communicate

harminka — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 07:28:35 -0500

Autism can build a wall of poor communication between those struggling with the condition and their families. While a personal computer can help bridge the divide, the distraction and complexity of a keyboard can be an insurmountable obstacle.

Antidepressant No More Effective Than Placebo For Autistic Children

Margaret Wilde — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 06:27:08 -0500

A government-funded study involving 149 participants aged 5 to 17 finds that the antidepressant, Citalopram, is no more effective than a placebo and has side-effects twice as bad. About a third of autistic children in the US take this drug or others closely related to it.

Sound processing abnormalities in autistic children

harminka — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:50:20 -0600

Abnormalities in auditory and language processing may be evaluated in children with autism spectrum disorder by using magnetoencephalography (MEG), according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

UT Health Science Center researchers study diet and autism

harminka — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:35:29 -0500

Researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston have embarked on one of the first double-blind, clinical studies to determine whether gluten and dairy products play a role in autistic behavior as parents have anecdotally claimed.

Mother's antibody production may affect fetal brain

harminka — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:38:12 -0600

The mothers of some autistic children may have made antibodies against their fetuses’ brain tissue during pregnancy that crossed the placenta and caused changes that led to autism, suggests research led by Johns Hopkins Children’s Center investigators and published in the February issue of the Journal of Neuroimmunology.

Virtual reality teaches autistic children street crossing

harminka — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:20:48 -0600

Recent research conducted at the University of Haifa found that children with autism improved their road safety skills after practicing with a unique virtual reality system. "Children with autism rarely have opportunities to experience or to learn to cope with day-to-day situations.

Gray matter increase in brains of autistic children

harminka — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:16:49 -0600

Using a novel imaging technique to study autistic children, researchers have found increased gray matter in the brain areas that govern social processing and learning by observation.

Matrix of autism

harminka — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:09:49 -0500

Autistic children are doubly stigmatized. On the one hand, they are often dismissed as “low functioning” or mentally retarded, especially if they have poor speaking skills as many do. Yet when autistics do show exceptional abilities—uncanny visual discrimination and memory for detail, for example—their flashes of brilliance are marginalized as aberrations, mere symptoms of their higher order cognitive deficit.

Gordon Brown urged to support Autistic Children after Cambridge University Study

Autism News — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 11:29:22 -0500

(London,UK) The Autism Awareness Campaign UK has urged Britain's new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown to support autistoc children in the wake of an unpbublished study from Cambridge University's renowned Autism Research Centre.

Autistic children could learn through stereotypes

harminka — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:05:12 -0500

Autistic children have a capacity to understand other people through stereotypes, say scientists at UCL (University College London). The research shows that autistic children are just as able as others to predict people's behaviour when stereotypes, such as gender and race, are the only available guide.

Imaging Study Provides Clues About Social Deficits of Autistic Children

Anastvatz — Sat, 05 May 2007 15:30:52 -0500

New imaging research at UCLA shows that impairments in autistic children's ability to imitate and empathize can be linked to dysfunction in the brain's mirror-neuron system.

Social behavior differs in children with family history of autism

harminka — Sat, 05 May 2007 03:51:00 -0500

The baby brothers and sisters of autistic children do not seek emotional cues from adults, or respond to them, as often as other toddlers do, suggests new research from the University of California, San Diego.