In the 30 years since Louise Brown, the first ‘test-tube baby’, was born, fertility techniques have grown into a major industry, accounting for more than 1 percent of births in the U.S. The general assumption has been that these babies are perfectly normal ― but are they?
In the late 1990s, after Daniel Geschwind had established himself as an expert on the genetics of neurological diseases, a personal connection abruptly pulled him into autism research. Since then, he has participated in dozens of studies probing the genetic basis of autism and related neuro-developmental disorders.
‘Eagle-eyed’ vision, characteristic of many people on the autism spectrum, stems at least in part from abnormal variations in the early stages of visual processing, according to two reports published in the January issue of Biological Psychiatry.
Every baby born in Denmark, within the first few days of life, receives a unique, 10-digit identification number. The babyʼs name and number become a part of the Danish Medical Birth Registry, a comprehensive electronic record of the birth details ― from birth weight and length to parents’ smoking habits ― established in 1968.
At the height of his presidential campaign against Senator John McCain last July, Barack Obama declined the advocacy group Autism Society of Americaʼs invitation to discuss health reform at a town hall meeting. But in a written response, the then-Senator promised to increase federal funding for autism research and treatment to $1 billion each year by the end of his first term in office.
Rebecca Saxe has been designing brain imaging experiments to study infant brain development, moral judgment and theory of mind in people with autism, who often have trouble grasping othersʼ thoughts.
Yesterday, the mainstream media was ablaze with news that doctors may soon be able to screen for autism in the womb.
In the past few years, studies have linked various chromosomal regions, candidate genes and copy number variations to a higher risk of autism. But none of those findings explain why the condition is four times more common in boys than in girls.
Autism and fragile X syndrome are characterized by very different brain processes, even though the two disorders show similar social deficits, say authors of the first functional imaging study to compare the two disorders.
Children with autism process sounds a split second slower than typically developing children, according to a new study that measured the magnetic fields emitted from the children’s brains.