Funded by the Research Council’s Programme on Mental Health (PSYKISK), a sub-study of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) headed by Ms Posserud was conducted as part of the “Barn i Bergen” (Children in Bergen) project. The study shows that the diagnosis of ASD may apply to as much as one per cent of the population, according to Dr. Posserud, who is a doctor and researcher in the field of child psychiatry at Hau ...

Nationwide Children’s Hospital has been selected to join the Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network (ATN), connecting Columbus with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Missouri as the nation’s only ATN institutions in the Midwest region. The ATN is the nation's first network of hospitals and physicians dedicated to developing a model of comprehensive medical care for children ...

A recent investigation published by the British Medical Journal BMJ concluded that Dr. Andrew Wakefield misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of the patients whose cases formed the basis of a 1998 study linking Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) to childhood vaccines. Regardless of the cause, in the past decade there has been a huge increase in the incidence of children with Autistic Spec ...

Use of medical, mental health, and case management services for young adults with an autism spectrum disorder appears to decline after high school, according to a report in the February issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. ...

A study from MIT neuroscientists reveals that high-functioning autistic adults appear to have trouble using theory of mind to make moral judgments in certain situations. Specifically, the researchers found that autistic adults were more likely than non-autistic subjects to blame someone for accidentally causing harm to another person. This shows that their judgments rely more on the outcome of the incident ...

Connected highways of nerve cells carry information to and from different areas of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. Scientists are trying to draw a complete atlas of these connections - sometimes referred to as the “connectome” - to gain a better understanding of how the brain functions in health and disease. The results are published in the January 27, 2011 issue of Neuron. ...

Autism Speaks, North America's largest autism science and advocacy organization, is pleased to announce the expansion of its Autism Treatment Network to include 17 leading children's hospitals and academic medical centers in the U.S. and Canada. The continuing and new participating centers are listed at the end of this report with a brief description of the facility and primary investigator. ...

Gerald Spindel, M.D., host of the "Eye On Health" series, recently interviewed neurofeedback expert Edward Jacobs, PhD. Dr. Jacobs is Board Certified in Neurofeedback (BCN) and practices psychology in southern New Hampshire. Dr. Jacobs, a polished and knowledgeable speaker, provides a balanced overview of neurofeedback and its use in the treatment of various disorders, such as attention deficit hyperactivit ...

In the late 1990's, a journal article was published in BMJ (British Medical Journal) that linked autism to childhood vaccination. This understandably created parental fear related to vaccinating their children. The article was eventually retracted because of irregularities in the study. Now CNN News reports that lead author Dr. Andrew Wakefield "misrepresented or altered the medical histories of all 12 of t ...

Parents, caregivers and mental health professionals have often reported violence and aggression in children or adolescents with autistic disorder. However, most of these observations derived from anecdotal reports, and studies remain limited on the frequency and characterization of aggression in autism. Thus, researchers set out to better characterize and understand the different types of aggressive behavio ...