A 16-year-old starts his own computer consulting and repair business, Hire the Brain—impressive. Today’s Columbia Tribune tells how Collin Driscoll, who has Asperger Syndrome, started his company with his father and, too, how he’s learned to deal with his sound sensitivity.

Several months ago, [Driscoll's] mother convinced him to take a trip by himself to his aunt’s home in Kansas and to help her trucking company fix its computer system. It was a big step for Collin, but he enjoyed it, and at his aunt’s encouragement decided he wanted to start the business with his father, Steve, an IT programmer who formerly worked for large companies but was forced into semi-retirement after suffering a stroke.

“I’ve gone from being the geek to being his driver,” joked Steve Driscoll, who marvels at his son’s ability with computers.

Go here to the webpage of Hire the Brain, which notes “Why pay for the whole squad when all you need is one good brain?”—why, indeed?

Ping, ping, ping.

There’s nothing quite like it—those rhythmic twirpings that say, “The food is microwaved.” Charlie having become quite proficient at making his own afterschool snacks thanks to this modern technological innovation (and the phenomenon of frozen food), it’s a sound heard often at out place around 3pm, every weekday.

Imagine the response to hearing 49 microwaves set to play Jingle Bells—-now that’s some holiday cheer.

Experimental drugs that are said to “correct” symptoms of Fragile X, Rett Syndrome, and tuberous sclerosis complex are now in early-stage human trials, the MIT Technology Review reports. The drugs reduce the activity of a receptor called metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, or mGluR5, and have previously been tested on mice, as reported in the June 25-29 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. From the MIT Technology Review:

People with fragile X, the most common form of heritable mental retardation and a leading cause of autism, have a mutation in the FMRP gene, which normally inhibits protein synthesis stimulated by a receptor called metabotropic glutamate receptor 5, or mGluR5.

Last year, [lead researcher and MIT neuroscientist Mark Bear] and Gul Dolen, also at MIT, announced that they could correct abnormal brain development and faulty memory and reduce seizures in affected mice by decreasing mGluR5 activity by 50 percent. “The idea that you could reintroduce function is a sea-change event,” said Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom, a neuroscientist and physician at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, at the neuroscience conference.

Bear has founded a company, Seaside Therapeutics, at which human trials of one of the drugs are now underway. He also says:

“We may have our finger on a biochemical pathway that is applicable more generally in autism.”

More about the STX107, the “lead drug canditate, can be found at the Seaside Therapeutics website.

The “rainfall causes autism?” study is garnering its share of media attention, as in this article, Study links autism and wet weather, in the San Jose Mercury News (which is curiously, or appropriately titled, depending on your views about mercury and autism).

But what about the correlation more than a few parents have noted about how their autistic children seem to become increasingly unsettled as the barometric pressure falls and the humidity rises; as a rainstorm, and especially a thunderstorm, is brewing? As the weather changes?

A study to be released today in the November Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, reports on a link between high levels of rainfall and increased rates of autism. From the LA Times blog, Booster Shots:

Cornell University economist Michael Waldman found that in areas of California, Oregon and Washington that experienced high levels of rain and snowfall during the years 1987-2001, autism rates among school-aged children rose when measured in 2005. Those children diagnosed with autism would have been under 3 during the periods of high precipitation, the period during which autism is generally diagnosed.

There was mention of a precipitation-autism link in 2006, in Prof. Waldman’s study on TV causing autism—more on that finding (which was, may I say, received with many grains of salt) is here.

And it may help to remember, that correlation does not equal causation.

The West Side News reports on the benefits of hipportherapy for disabled children; a friend’s daughter started this sport some months ago and has been enjoying it:

….[hipportherapy's] techniques involve more than just putting a child in saddle and walking him around a riding ring.

Participants ride forward, backwards, and sideways in an effort to strengthen different muscle groups and experience the horse’s movements differently.

Something tells me you can horseback ride on a Wii, or not?

Sunday we drove to Philadelphia to see a good friend. He was driving into the city from one direction and we from Jersey, and we agreed to meet in South Philly. We drove past what I noted was a Vietnamese restaurant and then lines of police cars and small groups of policemen, and lots of people walking vaguely in the direction of a giant pinata that Jim promptly dubbed “like the Trojan Horse” (it was a burro shaped pinata) and that we later realized was part of a Day of the Dead celebration. Jim found a barely the right size parking place on a city block and maneuvered the car in. We started walking, ducked into an Italian seafood restaurant to use the ATM, and sighted our friend, Hal, across Washington Avenue. Lunch was suggested and we started to debate about what to eat.

“Spring rolls,” Charlie said, soon as we asked him what he’d like so we backtracked to a Vietnamese restaurant and sat down. Charlie insisted that Hal sit next to him as conveyed by a definite “no” when I asked if he’d like to sit by me. The spring rolls that Charlie likes are technically summer rolls but somehow we referred to them as “spring rolls” when Charlie started to eat them, and the name stuck. (It’s my error, most likely—-the cylindrical rolls remind me of the Chinese egg rolls, aka spring rolls, that we used to help my mom make.) If you haven’t had them, they’re made of rice paper made soft from soaking in water, rice vermicelli, shrimp, green onions, and sometimes slivers of pork, and they’re served with a salty-sweet-sticky peanut dipping sauce. We also ordered Charlie a bowl of rice vermicelli with actual spring rolls, deep-fried and crispy.

He ate the soft summer rolls with gusto and used his soup spoon to get every last drop of sauce, then set to work on the noodles. He poked at the spring rolls, raised one to his nose to sniff it, and put it back in the bowl. When I offered to trade him my vermicelli for his spring rolls, he readily agreed. I handed over my bowl after a couple of requests pertaining to fork, face, and napkin, and then hastily leaned across the table when I saw that Charlie’s water glass was perilously placed on the edge of the table between him and Hal.

I’m not telling this story to be a restaurant critic or to add another chapter in the annals of “how to take an autistic child out to eat in a restaurant.” (One thing that works for us: Leaving happy and, preferably, with a reasonably full stomach is always preferable, even if you have to eat fast.) (Another thing, while I’m at it: Choose a place that’s rather noisy and that will tolerate a bit of a sticky floor.) I especially noted Charlie’s disinterest in the deep-fried brown spring rolls and preference for the soft white summer rolls. Sensory sensitivities (tactile defensiveness being perfectly conveyed in Whitterer on Autism’s line drawings) are a topic raised, it seems, by individuals at all “ends” of the autism spectrum. One friend refuses to wear wool anything, and knit sweaters more generally (something about what they feel like on said friend’s arms). In the midst of a back and forth about being “high-functioning” vs. being “low-functioning,” a commenter noted some who need special treatment, due to sensory sensitivities that make certain textures, colors, tastes (and I’d add, shapes, smells, temperatures) of foods unbearable, to the extent that some individuals may starve themselves.

Luckily the above-mentioned friend, polarfleece was invented (probably luckily for Charlie too—-rare’s the time I’ve tried him wearing a sweater). We also discovered for sure last week that Charlie prefers his clothes on the loose side. He’s been growing so quickly that he’s been growing out of his clothes at an unprecedented rate. I realized, belatedly, that his pants must be pinching him hard in the waist and who knows but that had something to do with some seemingly unaccountable moments in the past few weeks? Larger pants were duly purchased; Charlie not being one to go through the tedium of dressing rooms, I checked the length and we were out of the boys’ clothing section. But while the length was almost just right (I cuffed the bottoms), the waist was way to big and Charlie was regularly enjoined to pull up his pants. He hasn’t seemed to mind doing this now that the pinching in the stomach problem has been solved, but he really needed a belt, and so back to Target we went on Saturday night.

I was still wary of fastening the belt too tightly. Charlie is certainly verbal—-how else would we have had lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant—-but telling us “my pants are too tight, it hurts” or “my stomach feels sick” or “when you talk in that tone of voice, you remind me of something bad that happened in the past”: His words can’t (yet) convey these, so we have to look at what he does to get a sense of what he’d tell us if he could.

Such limited language ability suggests—says—”low-functioning,” I guess. I always stumble over that word and over the use of the word “functioning,” whether it’s “hfa” or “lfa” that are referred to. A CBC News video, Positively Autistic, occasioned some pointed discussion about “lfa” and “hfa.” There’s plenty that Charlie can’t do that children his age can. His homework involves writing his first and last names and the numbers 1-5, and doing single-digit addition with a calculator. He walked, sometimes ran, ahead of the three of us on South Philly streets, and stopped at the sidewalk and looked back at us before crossing. He started moaning and sounding overall distressed and I finally heard him asking softly for a “green drink.” He tensed up and sounded really distressed when Jim and I talked too much, and too avidly, about the latest goings-on at school for Charlie, who’s been going through “transition pangs.” We let our voices trail off and took turns talking to Hal about things when Charlie was out of earshot.

Yes, Charlie isn’t able, at this point, to talk himself about what’s going on at school, about how his pants fit, about what he might have wanted to do on Sunday afternoon. But there’s more understanding—more competence to presume—in Charlie than what he says may suggest. (And how able is the average person in explaining their emotions and feelings; why they believe in what they do; why they are voting the way they plan to on November 4th? How often do you get into disagreements, conflict, a fight, over information that is miscommunicated and the misunderstandings that result?)

We walked to Hal’s car first and we all got in, Charlie perched in the middle of the back seat and me squashed into what’s left on the right back seat. We spend so much time in our car—its odometer is nearing the 100,000 mark—that it feels very odd to be in any other car and perhaps especially one like Hal’s, with a pristine back seat free of hidden aged French fries and soda stains. Hal drove us to our car. Charlie lingered in Hal’s, after Jim and I had said our good-byes. He finally said “bye Hal” from somewhere within the blue hood of his sweatshirt, then unbuckled the seat belt and slid out, and ran to get into the back seat, still sprinkled with beach sand and the whiff of summer, of the black car.

We passed the giant pinata again as we left. It wasn’t meant to be broken with sticks to reveal sweets and prizes within but who knows what treasures might be stowed away inside it?

Teachers at Patterson Mill Middle/High School in Maryland are using a Wii to teach autistic students sports, today’s Baltimore Sun reports. The teachers were able to purchase the Nintendo device through a grant; the Wii’s been incorporated into the students’ daily schedule. And, I know someone who’s planning to teach autistic students to use a Wii as her project for master’s thesis.

(Though I don’t think we’ll be getting one at home, preferring to stick to “actual” exercise (biking, swimming) rather than the virtual sort……..)

Regardless of whether or not BitTorrent founder Bram Cohen has Asperger’s Syndrome as reported in the October 16th Business Week, this post about Cohen in Valleywag—according to which Asperger’s is “a sort of autism lite thought to be common among geeks” and a “mental condition”—might lead you to at least raise an eyebrow or sigh in annoyance. Or exasperation.

Has lugging loads of (soaking wet) laundry led to your developing the muscles in your arms (though not as much as this Olympian mom)? Imagine if you had an iBasket, a combination laundry basket/washing machine, rendering the lugging-laundry-basket step unnecessary—-now, how about automating the next step, hoisting the cleaned but still wet items into the dryer………