[Adta] Fw: STUDY PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT AUTISM AFFECTS FUNCTIONING OF ENTIRE BRAIN

[Cynthia BERROL]

Barbara,
Thanks for posting this excellent data about autism.
Warmly,
Cynthia Berrol 

--- Barbara A Busse <busse002 at mc.duke.edu> wrote:

> 
> Good morning!
>       This was fascinating.  have a Great Day! 
> Barbara Busse
> ----- Forwarded by Barbara A Busse/MCLibrary/mc/Duke
> on 08/16/2006 11:00 AM
> -----
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>               Subject 
>              H.GOV>                    STUDY
> PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT AUTISM 
>                                        AFFECTS
> FUNCTIONING OF ENTIRE BRAIN 
>                                                     
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>              08/16/2006 08:49                       
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> U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
> NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
> NIH News
> National Institute of Child Health and Human
> Development (NICHD)
> http://www.nichd.nih.gov/
> National Institute on Deafness and Other
> Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
> http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/
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> EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: Wednesday, August 16, 2006,
> 12:01 a.m. ET
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> CONTACT: Robert Bock or Marianne Glass Miller,
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> bockr at mail.nih.gov
> 
> STUDY PROVIDES EVIDENCE THAT AUTISM AFFECTS
> FUNCTIONING OF ENTIRE BRAIN
> Previous View Held Autism Limited to Communication,
> Social Behavior, and
> Reasoning
> 
> A recent study provides evidence that autism affects
> the functioning of
> virtually the entire brain, and is not limited to
> the brain areas
> involved with social interactions, communication
> behaviors, and
> reasoning abilities, as had been previously thought.
> The study,
> conducted by scientists in a research network
> supported by the National
> Institutes of Health (NIH), found that autism also
> affects a broad array
> of skills and abilities, including those involved
> with sensory
> perception, movement, and memory.
> 
> The findings, appearing in the August "Child
> Neuropsychology", strongly
> suggest that autism is a disorder in which the
> various parts of the
> brain have difficulty working together to accomplish
> complex tasks.
> 
> The study was conducted by researchers in the
> Collaborative Program of
> Excellence in Autism (CPEA), a research network
> funded by two components
> of the NIH, the National Institute of Child Health
> and Human Development
> and the National Institute on Deafness and Other
> Communication
> Disorders.
> 
> "These findings suggest that further understanding
> of autism will likely
> come not from the study of factors affecting one
> brain area or system,
> but from studying factors affecting many systems,"
> said the director of
> NICHD, Duane Alexander, M.D.
> 
> People with autism tend to display 3 characteristic
> behaviors, which are
> the basis of the diagnosis of autism, explained the
> study's senior
> author, Nancy Minshew, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry
> and Neurology at
> the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
> These behaviors involve
> difficulty interacting socially, problems with
> verbal and non-verbal
> communications, and repetitive behaviors or narrow,
> obsessive interests.
> Traditionally, Dr. Minshew said, researchers
> studying autism have
> concentrated on these behavioral areas.
> 
> Within the last 20 years, however, researchers began
> studying other
> aspects of thinking and brain functioning in autism,
> discovering that
> people with autism have difficulty in many other
> areas, including
> balance, movement, memory, and visual perception
> skills.
> 
> In the current study, Dr. Minshew and her colleagues
> administered a
> comprehensive array of neuropsychological tests to a
> group of children
> with autism. The researchers tested 56 autistic
> children, and compared
> their responses to those of 56 children who did not
> have autism. The
> children with autism were classified as having
> higher functioning autism
> -- an I.Q. of 80 or above, and the ability to speak,
> read, and write.
> All of the children in the study ranged in age from
> 8 to 15 years. The
> purpose of the test array, Dr. Minshew said, was to
> determine whether
> there were any patterns in mental functioning unique
> to autism.
> 
> "We set out to find commonalities across a broad
> range of measures, so
> that we could make inferences about what's going on
> in the brain," Dr.
> Minshew said.
> 
> The researchers found that, across the entire series
> of tests, the
> children with autism performed as well as -- and in
> some instances even
> better than -- the other children on measures of
> basic functioning.
> Uniformly, however, they had trouble with complex
> tasks.
> 
> For example, regarding visual and spatial skills,
> the children with
> autism were very good at finding small objects in a
> cluttered visual
> field, on tasks like finding Waldo in the "Where's
> Waldo" picture books
> series. However, when asked to perform a complex
> task, like telling the
> difference between the faces of similar looking
> people, they had great
> difficulty.
> 
> Although their memory for the detail in a story was
> phenomenal, the
> children with autism had great difficulty
> comprehending the story. Many
> were highly proficient at spelling and had a good
> command of grammar,
> but had difficulty understanding complex figures of
> speech, like idioms
> and metaphors.
> 
> "We see this with our patients," Dr. Minshew said.
> "If you use an
> expression like 'hop to it,' a child with autism may
> literally 
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