This is Your Brain on Autism?

We’re starting to explore more avenues of autism research for Alex. (Jill favors worms, which I like for bass but would have to learn more about before I o.k. them for Alex.) But if you have a child diagnosed with ASD who in turn has a younger infant sibling, the Infant Brain Imaging Study at the Center for Autism Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) is looking for participants. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which is painless, is being used to examine the brains of children younger than 12 months.

Photo courtesy of laszlo-photo (flickr.com)

Autism Speaks has kicked in $5 million to expand and link two large-scale, multi-site studies of more than 2000 infant siblings of children with autism, who are at higher genetic risk for developing the disorder. This research will investigate genetic and environmental risk factors for autism from pre-natal development through early childhood. Read more here about the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network and the Early Autism Risk Longitudinal Investigation projects, and contact the CHOP program here.

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Now that she’s finally let Leonardo DiCaprio go (bye, sinking ship! bye, stultifying ’50s existence!), Kate Winslet will provide the English narration on “The Sunshine Boy,” a documentary exploring autism by Icelandic director Fridrik Thor Fridriksson. The film, by producer Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir documenting attempts to understand her autistic son, will have its international premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival next month. How many of these celebrities, I wonder, are just getting on a bandwagon, how many are just taking jobs, and how many actually care? And does the answer matter at all if word is still getting spread?

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An autistic boy was ordered off a public transit bus in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on Wednesday when he began to scream and cry. The 8-year-old was with a dozen other autistic children on the way back from a summer camp excursion with the Autism Society Nova Scotia. His parents are demanding more explanation. I often wonder when we’ll run into this with Alex, then I think that the odds are any bus driver you get is likely to know someone with  autism. I also guess we’re lucky to live in a friendly city like New York, where people have learned the hard way to just wear blinders when something isn’t harming them; Alex definitely gets more out-and-out stares when we visit other parts of the country.

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UPDATE:

Halifax Metro Transit

says their driver did not order a boy with autism to leave the bus. A spokeswoman says the situation might have been handled differently, but points out a surveillance tape showing the group left the bus by choice.

Click the link above and scroll down to read the comments — as always, an illuminating discussion of people on both sides of the issue.