Genes, Music, and Practice Makes Perfect

Today’s Scientific American reviews the new study about autism genes in 88 Middle Eastern families and emphasizes that the genes found are “linked to a heightened risk of autism” and, too, that these genes are crucial to a child’s ability to learn.” Noting that marrying second and third, and even first, cousins is not unusual in the Middle East, Scientific American points out that studying such families enables researchers to

track recessive genetic traits (caused by mutations that only affect individuals with two copies of the flawed genes). Such traits occur far more frequently in inbred families than in others.

Six mutations were found in the form of deletions, and all of these genes (which had not been previously linked to autism) play a role in “creating and strengthening synapses,” the connections between neurons:

Normally, when nerve cells (neurons) activate in response to an environmental factor (such as processing a new face or a new sound), synapses between two active cells change to provide stronger connections so the cells can pass on information more efficiently. As the brain develops, new connections are continuously formed among nerve cells, reinforced and, in some instances, broken as the brain starts to mature and divvy up its different functions to specific groups of neurons.

According to the findings, “All of the relevant mutations could disrupt the formation of vital neural connections during a critical period when experience is shaping the brain,” says Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md. To wit, most children are diagnosed with autism between the ages of one and three years of age.

Walsh says the team believes these deletions—which in most cases found here only remove some, but not all, of the DNA that makes up a gene—may mean that the genes can regain some of their normal function. In fact, some of these genes may just be switched off. “This presents the possibility that in some kids we could get the gene going again without necessarily having to put it back in the brain,” he says.

Jim Sutcliffe, a molecular physiologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., in a Science editorial notes that the majority of autism research is geared toward prenatal development, even though the brain continues to develop well after a child is born. “Experience and environmental input play an important role in subsequent development,” he says. He calls the notion that learning in early life is disrupted by these autism genes “an intriguing proposal,” but says that further research is needed to validate it.my emphases

Dan Geschwind, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, also notes that in order to study the hypothesis that autism genes affect synapse function, at least 20 to 30 other genes that have been implicated in autism need to be tested.

The new study, then, not only points towards why early intervention in the form of “enriched environments through repeated activities” might help autistic children to “train the neurons to make up for their lost function.” Perhaps it also suggests why a child might seem to be developing “normally” and then present with symptoms of autism, as the child’s brain development is somehow disrupted, and precisely at a time when children are expected to start talking and showing other signs of developmental maturity.

But about that repetitive learning.

“Repetitive learning” invokes images of rote learning and children-become-robotic in their responses after, for instance, too much behavioral therapy or “training.” This is a valid critique of ABA teaching and (having been studying ABA for the past nine years, since Charlie started in a home ABA program in September of 1999) I’d also extend it to the teaching, curricular choices, and overall learning style that can happen in an ABA program. Charlie has not done well in ABA programs in which he sat at his desk, did ten rounds of something (often getting the first wrong), and was handed a toy or told (mechanically) “good job!”; in which what he was learning and the methods used were said to be appropriate for him “because they worked for X other student.” ABA has helped Charlie when teachers have shut the textbook and sat down and gotten to know him, learned his quirks and dislikes, and grinned at his sense of humor.

When I teach—-I teach Latin and ancient Greek to college students—-I tend to emphasize repetitive learning myself. There’s no way around it: Students have to learn the endings of declensions of nouns and conjugations of words, grammar rules (and the exceptions), and vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary. And you can drill these into students in a boring and dry way, or you can make sure you have five colors of dry erase marker and be prepared to dance around the room, as needed, and to lead everyone singing Latin grammar—-hic, haec, hoc…..yes, I have done it. Music helps the memory.

Indeed, I’ve become an unofficial music teacher for Charlie. Once I sat with him, the logbook nearby, and did ABA drills; I retired from that when he was 5 and thought I’d be “just mom.” But then he started taking piano lessons with a great teacher with an ABA background, and then his teacher went on a hiatus, and then I decided to have Charlie learn cello and have been piecing together a sort of music book. Repetition has been key in Charlie’s learning music, to play two instruments and to learn to read music—in treble and bass clefs—as he plays, too: Practice makes perfect (or getting there) when playing the piano, as you train mind and fingers how to move over the keys, according to what the notes on the page say.

I know this from years of practicing piano and viola, playing scales and Hanon exercises, working my way through books of sonatas and minuets and preludes and fugues: There’s a virtue in doing something over and over. Often I’d find I’d memorized a piece just because I had played it so much. Repeating playing of the same musical piece trains the fingers where to move until it’s second nature. All the repetitive learning Charlie has done has helped to train his mind to make those connections, to pick up at 11 what he did not when he was 3 and 5 and 7 (he’s now lovely full sentences all on his own).

Another new study suggests that music played by a human being elicits a stronger emotional response from a listener, than when a computer plays it, and especially during chord changes—during transitional moments. Real live musicians are able to be aware of the emotional impact of their performing and to make adjustments, and especially when changes in the music occurs. The ear has it here, it seems, over the software and the silicon chip.

This was why Charlie learned so much from his piano teacher, a musician himself, and why I’ve felt very sad when I learned the teacher has moved elsewhere. Suddenly it is up to me to make sure that Charlie keeps playing; that his musical education continues. We have not been practicing as much, in part because there is now another instrument to practice and because, without the goal of a lesson every Sunday, one gets a little less directed. We used to practice piano almost every day and, without the regular, repeated practices, Charlie’s playing is less precise and he has to pause and find a key that he once struck automatically. But once he gets started, something “kicks in”—the synapses start forming. We started a new piece (”Runaway Rabbit”) yesterday.

When Charlie was diagnosed with autism, I never thought he would — as I had —play the piano, let alone the cello. Told that “individuals with autism live a full lifespan,” I shrunk at the thought of Charlie filling those years watching TV shows he neither understood nor cared about, or just sitting in a chair, his mind full of thoughts, and nothing happening. I can’t quite express my joy when he learned to play piano and when I could see how much he liked it; he gets the biggest grin, too, when playing cello (and he is starting to learn to use his left hand hand to hold down a string to play a different note). And I wonder: Had Charlie (a very musical boy) not received those early years of intensive, individualized, loving teaching, would he have been able (at the age of 11) to play songs like “Merrily” and “Blue Danube Waltz”; to sit at the piano at all? To be able to benefit from the emotional richness—the connections—-that music provides?