31 posts · 33,754 views
An autism research blog
Jon Brock
31 posts
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- March 5, 2013
- 11:47 PM
- 184 views
Perfect match
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
I've got a new post over on the SFARI (Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative) blog discussing the use of control groups in autism research.Control groups are an essential part of autism research, providing a benchmark against which to assess those with autism. Finding, for instance, that participants with autism score an average of 68 percent on a test is meaningless if you don’t know how people who don’t have autism do on the same test. A control group can also b........ Read more »
Kover ST, & Atwoo AK. (2013) Establishing equivalence: methodological progress in group-matching design and analysis. American journal on intellectual and developmental disabilities, 118(1), 3-15. PMID: 23301899
- December 7, 2012
- 06:43 PM
- 182 views
DSM-5 field trials leave many questions unanswered
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Last weekend, the American Psychiatry Association announced that the DSM-5 has been ratified and that changes to the diagnosis of various “mental disorders” would go ahead as planned early next year. The implications for autism are still unclear. Most of the published studies suggest a reduction in autism rates. However, the argument from the DSM-5 working group responsible for autism has always been that everyone should wait for the official field trials to be published before jumping to ........ Read more »
Clarke DE, Narrow WE, Regier DA, Kuramoto SJ, Kupfer DJ, Kuhl EA, Greiner L, & Kraemer HC. (2012) DSM-5 Field Trials in the United States and Canada, Part I: Study Design, Sampling Strategy, Implementation, and Analytic Approaches. The American journal of psychiatry. PMID: 23111546
Regier DA, Narrow WE, Clarke DE, Kraemer HC, Kuramoto SJ, Kuhl EA, & Kupfer DJ. (2012) DSM-5 Field Trials in the United States and Canada, Part II: Test-Retest Reliability of Selected Categorical Diagnoses. The American journal of psychiatry. PMID: 23111466
- October 24, 2012
- 09:19 AM
- 206 views
More DSM-5 confusion
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
One of the big concerns about forthcoming changes to autism diagnosis in DSM-5 is that the new rules may miss out a sizeable chunk of the autism population, particularly those who, under current diagnostic guidelines, would be considered to have Asperger’s Disorder or PDD-NOS. A number of studies published over the last year or so seemed to confirm those fears, although each of those studies had its limitations.Earlier this month, a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry by Marisela Huert........ Read more »
Huerta M, Bishop SL, Duncan A, Hus V, & Lord C. (2012) Application of DSM-5 Criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder to Three Samples of Children With DSM-IV Diagnoses of Pervasive Developmental Disorders. The American journal of psychiatry, 169(10), 1056-64. PMID: 23032385
- September 14, 2012
- 12:13 PM
- 292 views
A genetic test for autism?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
This week's big autism story was a genetic test able to predict with 70% accuracy [1] whether or not a child had autism. Rather than looking for a specific gene that might differentiate autistic from non-autistic people, Stan Skafidis and colleagues developed the test by combining information about many different genetic variations. Critically, having developed the test based on one set of genetic data, they then tested the test on genetic data from a completely new set of people.I don't wa........ Read more »
Skafidas E, Testa R, Zantomio D, Chana G, Everall IP, & Pantelis C. (2012) Predicting the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder using gene pathway analysis. Molecular psychiatry. PMID: 22965006
- September 7, 2012
- 05:58 PM
- 407 views
The messy science behind The Autism Enigma
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Last Monday, the Australian current affairs program Four Corners featured a Canadian documentary entitled The Autism Enigma (it’s still currently available on iView in Australia). The main thrust of the program was that autism is caused by harmful bacteria in the gut. Not surprisingly, the program caused quite a stir, prompting responses from various members of the Australian autism research community. Critics argued that it over-simplified the problem of autism, ignored alternative expla........ Read more »
Finegold SM, Downes J, & Summanen PH. (2012) Microbiology of regressive autism. Anaerobe, 18(2), 260-2. PMID: 22202440
- July 19, 2012
- 08:03 AM
- 351 views
Why do (some) autistic kids struggle to recognise faces?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
This week, a guest post from the wonderful Ellie Wilson. Ellie's now at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, working with Declan Murphy. But she has the honourable distinction of being my first ever PhD student. The post is about the two studies that book-ended her thesis on face recognition in autism. Take it away, Ellie...Faces are essentially very similar: two eyes above a nose and a mouth. Yet most people are really good at noticing subtle differences between faces, and interpre........ Read more »
Wilson CE, Palermo R, & Brock J. (2012) Visual scan paths and recognition of facial identity in autism spectrum disorder and typical development. PloS one, 7(5). PMID: 22666378
- June 26, 2012
- 06:50 AM
- 366 views
Did Alan Turing have Asperger syndrome?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Alan Turing (Kings College, Cambridge)It’s no exaggeration to say that Alan Turing was one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Regarded as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, he also made ground-breaking contributions to the fields of mathematics, chemistry, and biology. Most famously, during World War II, he played a crucial role in cracking the Nazi's Enigma code.He was also, it's argued, a person with Asperger syndrome.There's something of a cottage ........ Read more »
O'Connell, H., & Fitzgerald, M. (2003) Did Alan Turing have Asperger's syndrome?. Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 20(1), 28-31. info:/
- May 2, 2012
- 08:58 AM
- 496 views
Autism and the art of campervan maintenance
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Sometimes, it's good to get away. In February, we spent two weeks cruising around the North Island of New Zealand in a campervan, quickly christened Campo by my four-year-old. We saw the giant Kauri trees of Waipoua and the giant sand dunes on 90 mile beach; we went sailing on the Bay of Islands and bathing in the volcanic springs of Hotwater Beach. And it only rained twice. I learnt a little of the art of campervan maintenance [1]. And, while I was under strict instructions not to do any w........ Read more »
Brock J. (2011) Commentary: Complementary approaches to the developmental cognitive neuroscience of autism--reflections on Pelphrey et al. (2011). Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 52(6), 645-6. PMID: 21574994
Pelphrey, K., Shultz, S., Hudac, C., & Vander Wyk, B. (2011) Research Review: Constraining heterogeneity: the social brain and its development in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 52(6), 631-644. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02349.x
- March 29, 2012
- 09:34 AM
- 572 views
Autism and intellectual disability in DSM-5
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Earlier this week, I wrote about the recently published study by McPartland, Reichow and Volkmar, looking at the potential impact of the proposed DSM 5 criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder. There were caveats-a-plenty but the data suggested that autism rates may go down considerably as a result of the renegotiation of diagnostic borders. In fact, a new diagnosis, Social Communication Disorder, has been created to capture all the people who won't now make the ASD cut-off.In the comments, an........ Read more »
McPartland, J., Reichow, B., & Volkmar, F. (2012) Sensitivity and Specificity of Proposed DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child , 51(4), 368-383. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2012.01.007
- March 26, 2012
- 12:42 PM
- 482 views
How will DSM 5 affect autism rates? The Yale study
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
In January, at a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association, Yale researcher, Dr Fred Volkmar gave a presentation of data from a study looking at the implications of changes to autism diagnostic criteria in DSM 5. His conclusion was that many people who are currently diagnosed with autism, Asperger's, or PDD-NOS would not meet the new proposed criteria for autism spectrum disorder in DSM 5.Volkmar's remarks were picked up by the New York Times, who ran with the lede:"Proposed changes in the de........ Read more »
McPartland, J., Reichow, B., & Volkmar, F. (2012) Sensitivity and Specificity of Proposed DSM-5 Diagnostic Criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of the American Academy of Child , 51(4), 368-383. DOI: 10.1016/j.jaac.2012.01.007
- January 20, 2012
- 06:40 PM
- 827 views
The Adventures of DataThief
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Having spent much of the past week struggling to make sense of my data, it’s good to come home, pour a glass of wine, put on some Sharon Jones, and, er… play with somebody else’s data!Recently, I’ve discovered DataThief - an application that allows you to scan in a graph from a paper and extract the data points. Sometimes, this provides insights that really aren’t obvious from the original paper.The other week, for example, I came across an intriguing neuroimaging study reported on the........ Read more »
Verhoeven, J., Rommel, N., Prodi, E., Leemans, A., Zink, I., Vandewalle, E., Noens, I., Wagemans, J., Steyaert, J., Boets, B.... (2011) Is There a Common Neuroanatomical Substrate of Language Deficit between Autism Spectrum Disorder and Specific Language Impairment?. Cerebral Cortex. DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhr292
- January 13, 2012
- 07:51 AM
- 773 views
Do kids with autism have big brains?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Like most things in autism research, the idea that people with autism have big brains goes back to an observation in Leo Kanner’s original autism paper, where he noted that some of the kids in his group had larger than normal heads. Over the years, there have been dozens of studies looking directly or indirectly at the issue of brain size in autism. In 2005, Martha Herbert provided a comprehensive review [pdf] of 25 such studies, describing the tendency towards large brains as "the most re........ Read more »
Nordahl, C., Lange, N., Li, D., Barnett, L., Lee, A., Buonocore, M., Simon, T., Rogers, S., Ozonoff, S., & Amaral, D. (2011) Brain enlargement is associated with regression in preschool-age boys with autism spectrum disorders. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20195-20200. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1107560108
Redcay, E., & Courchesne, E. (2005) When Is the Brain Enlarged in Autism? A Meta-Analysis of All Brain Size Reports. Biological Psychiatry, 58(1), 1-9. DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2005.03.026
- November 28, 2011
- 07:36 PM
- 710 views
A case of colour-emotion synaesthesia?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Anger he smiles, towering in shiny metallic purple armour.Queen Jealousy, envy waits behind him, her fiery green gown sneers at the grassy ground.Blue are the life giving waters taken for granted, they quietly understand.Once happy, turquoise armies lay opposite ready, but wonder why the fight is on.My red is so confident that he flashes trophies of war and ribbons of euphoria.Orange is young, full of daring but very unsteady for the first go round.My yellow in this case is not so mellow, in fac........ Read more »
Ramachandran VS, Miller L, Livingstone MS, & Brang D. (2011) Colored halos around faces and emotion-evoked colors: A new form of synesthesia. Neurocase. PMID: 22115465
- October 26, 2011
- 10:42 AM
- 1,575 views
The many faces of autism
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Evidence and Artifacts: 1 in 110A few years ago, before I got into autism research, I worked on a couple of projects looking at Down syndrome and Williams syndrome. Down syndrome, I assume, is familiar to most readers. Williams syndrome is much rarer and less well known, but is of considerable interest to researchers, not least because the extremely sociable personalities of many people with Williams syndrome provide an interesting (although complex) contrast with autism.What these two syndromes........ Read more »
Aldridge K, George ID, Cole KK, Austin JR, Takahashi TN, Duan Y, & Miles JH. (2011) Facial phenotypes in subgroups of pre-pubertal boys with autism spectrum disorders are correlated with clinical phenotypes. Molecular autism, 2(1), 15. PMID: 21999758
- August 19, 2011
- 07:58 AM
- 1,226 views
The curious case of the reversed pronoun
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
“You made a circle”, exclaimed Ethan proudly as he looked up from his drawing. “You did make a circle”, his mum acknowledged, ignoring the fact that, not for the first time, Ethan had reversed the pronoun, saying “you” when he should have said “I”. Ethan was one of six children from Providence, Rhode Island taking part in a study of child language development. Every couple of weeks, a researcher from Brown University would visit him and his mum at home, record, and then transcrib........ Read more »
Evans KE, & Demuth K. (2011) Individual differences in pronoun reversal: Evidence from two longitudinal case studies. Journal of Child Language, 1-30. PMID: 21669013
- August 14, 2011
- 09:22 AM
- 1,059 views
On neural correlates and causation
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
The advent of neuroimaging techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has revolutionized autism research. We can now look into the brain and see the "neural correlates" of autism. But, as with any form of correlation, identifying a neural correlate doesn't necessarily mean that we have identified a neural cause.
A case in point. Earlier this week I stumbled across a press release doing the rounds of the internet, proclaiming that "Brain imaging research reveals why autistic indiv........ Read more »
Mizuno A, Liu Y, Williams DL, Keller TA, Minshew NJ, & Just MA. (2011) The neural basis of deictic shifting in linguistic perspective-taking in high-functioning autism. Brain : a journal of neurology. PMID: 21733887
- July 8, 2011
- 07:23 PM
- 1,383 views
Autism, temporal binding... and chiropractic
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
I'm famous. Well, sort of. Earlier this week, one of my colleagues sent me a link to a YouTube video in which chiropractic doctor David Sullivan discusses one of my papers on autism and how it influences his "evidence based practice". It's a classic of its genre. The video starts off with a spinning brain and funky science-o-mercial music. And Sullivan somehow manages to equate autism with a dodgy dial-up internet connection whilst weaving our hypothesis in with Einstein and the space-time........ Read more »
Brock J, Brown CC, Boucher J, & Rippon G. (2002) The temporal binding deficit hypothesis of autism. Development and psychopathology, 14(2), 209-24. PMID: 12030688
- June 30, 2011
- 05:08 AM
- 821 views
Can MRI scans be used to diagnose autism?
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Another day, another autism diagnosis media storm. Last week, it was speech patterns. Before that it was urine. Today's story is that researchers in London have found a way to diagnose autism by performing multi-dimesional analyses of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans.So what did they actually do? And how close really are we to being able to use brain scanning to diagnose autism?The studyChristine Ecker and her colleagues at the Institute of Psychiatry tested a group of 20 high functi........ Read more »
Ecker C, Marquand A, Mourão-Miranda J, Johnston P, Daly EM, Brammer MJ, Maltezos S, Murphy CM, Robertson D, Williams SC.... (2010) Describing the brain in autism in five dimensions--magnetic resonance imaging-assisted diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder using a multiparameter classification approach. The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience, 30(32), 10612-23. PMID: 20702694
- June 30, 2011
- 03:33 AM
- 1,078 views
Why null ain't necessarily dull
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
Something slightly unusual happened this week. In a paper in the journal Vision Research, Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues reported that they had failed to find any statistically significant difference between the visual acuity of individuals with and without autism. The study was a follow-up to a 2009 paper that claimed to show enhanced (or "eagle-eyed") visual acuity in autism. Following two particularly damning commentaries by experts in vision science, the Baron-Cohen group got together with........ Read more »
Tavassoli T, Latham K, Bach M, Dakin SC, & Baron-Cohen S. (2011) Psychophysical measures of visual acuity in autism spectrum conditions. Vision research. PMID: 21704058
- June 24, 2011
- 08:37 PM
- 1,364 views
Screening for autism in infants and toddlers
by Jon Brock in Cracking the Enigma
It’s widely believed that early intervention is crucial for long-term prognosis in autism and that the earlier the intervention begins the better. Getting in early, of course, requires that autistic children are identified at a young age. But even for more severe forms of autism, children are rarely diagnosed before three to four years of age. With this in mind, the American Academy of Pediatrics has recommended screening all toddlers for autism.However, writing in next July’s issue of Pedia........ Read more »
Barbaro, J., & Dissanayake, C. (2010) Prospective Identification of Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infancy and Toddlerhood Using Developmental Surveillance: The Social Attention and Communication Study. Journal of Developmental , 31(5), 376-385. DOI: 10.1097/DBP.0b013e3181df7f3c
Al-Qabandi M, Gorter JW, & Rosenbaum P. (2011) Early Autism Detection: Are We Ready for Routine Screening?. Pediatrics. PMID: 21669896
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