FEAT DAILY NEWSLETTER
Sacramento, California http://www.feat.org
November 14, 2001
News Morgue Search www.feat.org/search/news.asp
·
Federal Govt Ready For Closer Look At Autism /
Environment Link
·
Of Purkinje Cells, Glutamate, A Puff And A Sound
·
CAN Promotes ‘The GEEK Disease’ with Wired Mag.
·
A Video Documentary “Come Back Jack”. . .
·
Letters to the FEAT Newsletter
[From Special Education News.}
The U.S. government appeared to formally recognize this
week a question many parents and researchers of autistic children have been
asking for years: “Is it something in the water?” Under a new program announced
this week, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the Environmental
Protection Agency will fund four new children’s environmental health research
centers charged with exploring the environmental contributors to the dramatic
increase in autism cases in the United States in the last decade. The centers
will also examine the origins of behavioral problems such as attention deficit
disorder.
By looking specifically at environmental factors, U.S.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson says, the government may
be able to fine tune its public health programs. “Ultimately the research
conducted at these centers will allow us to better target our health and
prevention efforts in order to do the most to improve the lives of America’s
children,” he said.
The four centers, which will join eight that were
established in 1998 to begin work on how the environment impacts other aspects
of children’s health, will receive $5 million apiece to operate from August
2002 through August 2007. Each has specific responsibilities within the new
environmental research effort. Centers to be established at the University of
California at Davis and at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the
University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey will study environmental
factors that may be related to autism.
At UC Davis , molecular biosciences scholar Isaac Pessah
at the School of Veterinary Medicine will work with the UC Davis M.I.N.D.
Institute to conduct a large epidemiological study of the exposure of unborn
and newborn infants to various metals, chemicals and vaccines. Though the
announcement for the new research project did not discuss specifics, the
inclusion of vaccines in the project’s possible scope could shed more light on
the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine, which has become highly controversial in autism
circles.
At the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, principal
investigator George Lambert will direct the Center for Childhood
Neurotoxicology and Assessment to determine the possible influence of mercury,
lead and valproic acid, a drug commonly used to control seizures, on autism,
learning disabilities and regression, according to the NIEHS. The scope will
include “critical windows for brain development in the forebrain and hindbrain”
and will search for links between exposures to mercury or other substances to behavior
development.
Two others project will examine pollutants and their
impacts on children. Friend’s Children’s Environmental Health Center Chief
Susan Schantz at the University of Illinois-Champaign/Urbana will look at how exposure
to mercury and PCBs, through fish caught in the Great Lakes, has impacted Hmong
and Laotian communities in Wisconsin. The center will study the impact the
contaminants have on children’s motor, sensory and mental development.
Meanwhile, a center at Children’s Hospital of Cincinnati
will explore how reducing pollutants in the home and neighborhood impacts
children’s hearing, behavior and test scores. Bruce Lanphear will head a
program that helps community participants lower lead levels in their homes. The
center will also test the possible link between children’s developmental
problems and exposure to pesticides, environmental tobacco smoke and lead as
unborn or newborn babies.
The plan for new environmental research centers comes on
the heels of a round of grants from the National Institutes of Health to put 13
other universities on the trail of autism’s causes. The National Institute of Mental
Health, one of five government agencies overseeing the distribution of federal
funds for autism research, announced last month grants totaling $3.9 million to
fund new autism research projects. According to National Institute of Mental
Health Director Steven Hyman, the grants “are focused on innovative treatments
and on supporting an initiative to create a nationwide network of major autism
research centers.”
Seven research centers—The University of Pittsburgh, Mount
Sinai School of Medicine in New York, University of California-Los Angeles, the
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Colorado Springs, Vanderbilt
University, Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati and Rutgers State
University in New Jersey—will focus on one or more aspects of treating autism
spectrum disorders.
Some will examine methods for teaching speech to nonverbal
children, teaching imitation skills and teaching joint attention skills using
parents as therapists. Others will focus on the use of anti-seizure medication
to treat difficult behavior, cognition-enhancing medication to treat learning difficulties
and mood disturbances and mood-stabilizing medication.
In addition, at least one program will test a new strategy
to increase understanding and treatment of self-injurious behavior by observing
mice. Six other schools—University of
California-Davis’s M.I.N.D. Institute, Emory University in Atlanta, the
University of Florida, the University of Utah, the University of Missouri and
Washington University in St. Louis— will use the new funds to develop
applications for autism research centers.
* * *
CAN Promotes ‘The GEEK Disease’ with Wired Mag.
[From the CAN-Alert Cure Autism Now list and from Wired
Magazine
website.]
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/
From CAN: The December issue of Wired Magazine contains a
superb article on autism and the epidemic rate in the Silicon Valley. Jon Shestack and CAN board member, Marnin
Kligfeld, worked closely with contributing editor Steve Silberman on its
development. Also in this issue is an
article on autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen.
What’s behind the rise in Asperger’s syndrome? It’s in the
genes, and techie parents may be passing it along.
PLUS: Take the AQ test. [Asperger’s Quotient?]
[Quick commentary: -groan- LS.]
* * *
A Video Documentary “Come Back Jack”. . .
. . . which shows the struggle of the Parish family to
find help for their 5 year old autistic boy will be shown Saturday, November
17, 2001 at 9:00 AM on Channel 44 (WGBX). Parents living in the New England
region (Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island) should be able
to see it.
The documentary shows how the Miller Method helped
move this child
toward human contact and functional communication. It is also being shown
on. For further
information contact ArnMill@aol.com
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* * *
Of Purkinje Cells, Glutamate, A Puff And A Sound
Cracking the mysteries of memory
[By Joanna Downer.]
http://unisci.com/stories/20014/1114016.htm
Neuroscientist David Linden, Ph.D., is excited about his
latest research findings, even though the experiments’ results echo his four-year-old
son’s tendency to answer questions with a resounding “No, no, no.”
But in science, sometimes figuring out what isn’t
happening can be very telling, says Linden, whose report appeared in the Nov.
13 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“It may sound dull because the answers are all ‘no,’ but
it’s actually exciting, because there’s just one possibility left and we’ve
already seen evidence for it,” he says.
Linden is studying what brain cells do to retain a new
memory. Scientists have shown that
learning happens when a brain cell gets stimulated in a way that reduces its
ability to respond to a particular brain messenger called glutamate.
“We have the ‘wiring diagram’ for some simple forms of
motor learning, so we know how memories get stored in the circuit because we
know which cells receive the stimulation and how they pass it along,” explains
Linden. “Now we’re using that wiring
diagram to look at the details.”
Linden is studying strange, sea-fan-shaped brain cells
called Purkinje cells (pronounced per-KIN-jee). These odd cells are found only
in the cerebellum, a part of the brain involved in coordinating and learning
muscle movement patterns.
“Purkinje cells are very unusual,” says Linden, professor
of neuroscience and director of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience at the Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine. “They are very flat. They are enormous, but unlike
other big neurons, they are inhibitory. They receive more connections than
other types of neurons and they fire 50 times per second even when you’re
sleeping.”
The Purkinje cells are involved in simple motor learning
processes similar to that in Pavlov’s experiments with dogs. But while Pavlov conditioned
a dog to salivate upon hearing a bell, Linden is considering a learning pathway
that causes the eye to blink in response to a sound rather than a puff of air.
It turns out that the signals from the sound and the puff
of air come together at Purkinje cells. Because the signals cross, eventually
simple motor learning links the sound and the blink, says Linden. When the
signals from the sound and the puff are received in quick succession and many
times over, it causes the temporary neuron shutdown that underlies learning.
Linden can mimic this shutdown, known as “long-term
synaptic depression,” by growing a Purkinje cell with a second type of brain
cell that normally conveys the signal from the sound. With this two-cell
system, he’s examined a particular question surrounding long-term depression in
the cerebellum.
“During long-term synaptic depression, the Purkinje cell
doesn’t respond to glutamate to the usual extent, but we haven’t known for sure
the reason behind that reduced response,” says Linden.
Once scientists showed that glutamate levels were
constant, the question became: Which of four possible causes for the reduced
response is really responsible for long-term depression of the neuron?
To excite a neuron, glutamate binds to its receptor on the
surface of the cell. That binding, in turn, opens a channel in the cell’s
membrane that lets various charged atoms, or ions, through. During long-term
depression of a neuron, the reduced response to glutamate could happen at four
different points, says Linden.
Last year, Linden and his colleagues showed that one
reason is that there are fewer docking points, or receptors, for glutamate on
the surface of neurons during long-term depression. But three other
possibilities still existed.
One possibility is the receptor could lose its taste for
glutamate and bind it less efficiently. Also, the channel opened by glutamate
could let ions through more slowly than normal, or it could be open for a
shorter amount of time. Linden’s new study rules out these three possibilities,
leaving reduced receptor number as the only contributor, he reports in what he
calls his “Jacob paper” for its similarities to his young son.
“The answers are no, no, and no,” says Linden. “We
suspected that the time of the ion channels’ opening didn’t change, but the
rate of ion flow or the efficiency of glutamate binding were reasonable
possibilities. The experiments, however, show that none of these three are
present in Purkinje cells during long-term synaptic depression.”
Now that the only contributor to the lowered response to
glutamate is receptor number, at least in his laboratory model, Linden and
others hope to create a mouse that can’t reduce the number of glutamate
receptors on its Purkinje cells. If the mouse can’t learn to blink in response
to the sound, they’ll know they found a key step in storing simple motor
memories.
The study was funded by the United States Public Health
Service and by the Develbiss Fund. Linden is the only author on the paper.
* * *
I am very offended that Bryna Siegel sites Stan Levine
in Honolulu,
Hawaii as a lawyer that she has worked with to advocate for
children. “’I Am
A Child Advocate’ Dr. Bryna Siegel Responds to Critic,”
http://www.feat.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0111&L=FEATNEWS&P=R10477
In fact, in at least one case here in Hawaii, Bryna
figuratively stabbed the parents and the child in the back and testified that
the child no longer needed an intensive ABA Program. Her arrogance at thinking that she could come in and make
sweeping statements about a child’s program when she had observed him for less
than an hour is alarming.
Her statements and testimony can take away a child’s
chance at a normal life. Many parents
in Hawaii consider Bryna a hired gun and a person who would do anything for
money. We have had it written into our
child’s IEP that Bryna cannot see our child under any circumstances.
* *
Your throw-away comment about the 12 year old boy with
autism facing years of youth detention if convicted of murder (“Hello, he’s
already in a detention center called autism.”) hit me in a soft spot. We are
talking about murder here. Is there nothing that a child with autism is
responsible for? If we excuse murder, why should any person agree to work with
a child with autism? It would be too dangerous.
I am tired of hearing about kids with autism that got
upset because they were not wearing the “right” shoes and so assaulted the bus
driver or the kid who hit a teacher because she did not say the “right” thing
back to him. Whatever happened to responsibility?
* *
Thank you for the sibling narrative on taking on the “parent
role”.
“Siblings Often Grapple With Their Role as ‘Parents’ of
Disabled”.
http://www.feat.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0111&L=FEATNEWS&P=R6760&m=2101
It was comforting to know that my 9 year old boy is not alone
is his quest to teach his younger brother, to be the mom/dad, and to find the
cure for autism. It is so sad, but it
is part of our life.
* *
The other night on ER, I noticed a “Cure Autism Now” sign
hanging on the wall of the emergency room.
Can we thank “Dr. Green” for that?
Nancy Marron
NMarron@mpsomaha.org
Lenny Schafer, Editor Catherine Johnson PhD
Ron Sleith Kay Stammers
Editor@feat.org Edward Decelie CALENDAR: Michelle Guppy events@feat.org
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