I am at the 13th annual Eden Institute Foundation Princeton Lecture Series on Autism: Affecting the Research and Service Agenda with guest lecturers Fred R. Volkmar, M.D., of the Yale University Child Study Center; Martha R. Herbert, M.D., Ph.D., of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital; and Michael Wigler, Ph.D., of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. I am live-blogging from the back row—-I’ll let you know what I hear.
Update 10.50am.
Herbert asks “what is autism”—is it (this was the title of her lecture) “A Brain Disorder or a Disorder Affecting the Brain?.” She argues that there are changes in all parts of the brain, not only in the parts of the brain that are associated with the “triad of impairments” (social, communicative, behavioral) associated with autism. As she suggests in the context of discussing research on the inflammation of the brain, “autism now keeps company with a different class of neurological diseases, not just developmental disorder, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, HIV.” A photo of dolphin brain abscesses as a result of “PCB/PBDE/Hg [=mercury] burden” is shown, and also an image of air pollution over China.
Update 1.44pm.
Wigler spoke about “A Unified Genetic Theory for Sporadic and Inherited Autism.” A large proportion of genetic disorders, he noted, could be brought about by spontaneous mutation; people were not looking at such spontaneous mutations before because there were not technologies to do it. Regarding autism, he said: “Spontaneous mutation, especially deletion, in the germline of a parent may cause much of sporadic autism [this is autism that is present in the child but not in his or her parents]“; this, he suggests, “can help explain increased incidence.” Conversely, inherited autism is “less than half, but a substantial proportion of all.”
Update 2.03pm.
Volkmar spoke about “New Approaches to Understanding Autism.” Noting that “autism impacts on development; development impacts on autism,” he spoke about a device to study eye tracking in autistic children. The device does this not by showing a child static photos but short snippets of movies (the movie used is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?); also, the device looks like a baseball gap that can simply be put on the head of a child.
I am unable to stay for the rest of the conference—-off to meet Charlie when he gets off the schoolbus.
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