Genome-Wide Study of Autism

(Ha! they found the genes, yet again?!?!)

Published In Nature

Combining family- and population-based approaches sheds new light on the potential roles of both common and rare forms of human genetic variationIn one of the first studies of its kind, an international team of researchers has uncovered a single-letter change in the genetic code that is associated with autism.

The finding, published in the October 8 issue of the journal Nature, implicates a neuronal gene not previously tied to the disorder and more broadly, underscores a role for common DNA variation.

In addition, the new research highlights two other regions of the genome, which are likely to contain rare genetic differences that may also influence autism risk.

"These discoveries are an important step forward, but just one of many that are needed to fully dissect the complex genetics of this disorder, " said Mark Daly, one of the study's senior authors, a senior associate member at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT and an associate professor at the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).

"The genomic regions we've identified help shed additional light on the biology of autism and point to areas that should be prioritized for further study."

"The biggest challenge to finding the genes that contribute to autism is having a large and well studied group of patients and their family members, both for primary discovery of genes and to test and verify the discovery candidates," said Aravinda Chakravarti, professor of medicine, pediatrics and molecular biology and genetics at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins, and one of the study's senior authors. "This latest finding would not have been possible without these many research groups and consortia pooling together their patient resources. Of course, they would not have been possible without the genomic scanning technologies either."

Autism is a common neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impaired social, behavioral and communication abilities. (How long will they keep on repeating this stereotype of Autism like stupid parrots, only God knows!!!)

Compared to other complex diseases, which are caused by a complicated mix of genetic, environmental and other factors, autism is highly heritable - roughly 90% of the disorder is thought to be genetic in origin. (NO KIDDING!!! No mercury from vaccines causing it? No other stupid conclusions?)

Yet the majority of autism cases cannot be attributed to known inherited causes. (Yes, to known inherited causes, maybe you have a lot to still learn? Maybe you dear Science do not know ALL there is to know about inherited causes? How about that possibility? Huh?)

Modern approaches that harness genome-scale technologies have begun to yield some insights into autism and its genetic underpinnings. However, the relative importance of common genetic variants, which are generally present in the human population at a frequency of about 5%, as well as other forms of genetic variation, remains an unresolved question. (Exactly!)

To more deeply probe autism's complex genetic architecture, a large multinational collaboration led by researchers at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital, Johns Hopkins University and elsewhere devised a two-pronged, genome-scale approach.

The first component makes use of a family-based method (called "linkage") that analyzes DNA from autism patients and their family members to detect portions of the genome that harbor rare but high-impact DNA variants. The second harnesses a population-based method (known as "association" ) that examines DNA from unrelated individuals and can expose common genetic variants associated with autism and which tend to exert more modest effects.

"Given the genetic complexity of autism, it's unlikely that a single method or type of genomic variation is going to provide us with a complete picture," said Daly.
"Our approach of combining multiple complementary methods aims to meet this critical challenge."

For their initial studies, the researchers examined roughly half a million genetic markers in more than 1,000 families from the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange (AGRE) and the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) repositories. Follow-up analyses were conducted in collaboration with the Autism Genome Project as well as other international groups.

"We are deeply grateful to all of the patients and their families who made this work possible," said Daly.The researchers' results highlight three regions of the human genome. These include parts of chromosomes 6 and 20, the top-scoring regions to emerge from the family-based linkage studies. Although further research is needed to localize the exact causal changes and genes within these regions that contribute to autism, these findings can help guide future work.

Read more: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7145/abs/nature05911.html

Before Lucy came Ardi

New earliest hominid found

AP –Dr. C. Owen Lovejoy, Kent State University professor of anthropology, stands next to the reconstructed skeleton of "Lucy," a near-complete fossil of a human ancestor that walked upright more than three million years ago. A team of researchers including Lovejoy today unveiled research findings of a skeleton older than "Lucy," nicknamed "Ardi.

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Randolph E. Schmid, Ap Science Writer

WASHINGTON – The story of humankind is reaching back another million years as scientists learn more about "Ardi," a hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago in what is now Ethiopia. The 110-pound, 4-foot female roamed forests a million years before the famous Lucy, long studied as the earliest skeleton of a human ancestor.

This older skeleton reverses the common wisdom of human evolution, said anthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy of Kent State University.
Rather than humans evolving from an ancient chimp-like creature, the new find provides evidence that chimps and humans evolved from some long-ago common ancestor — but each evolved and changed separately along the way.

"This is not that common ancestor, but it's the closest we have ever been able to come," said Tim White, director of the Human Evolution Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.
The lines that evolved into modern humans and living apes probably shared an ancestor 6 million to 7 million years ago, White said in a telephone interview.

But Ardi has many traits that do not appear in modern-day African apes, leading to the conclusion that the apes evolved extensively since we shared that last common ancestor.
A study of Ardi, under way since the first bones were discovered in 1994, indicates the species lived in the woodlands and could climb on all fours along tree branches, but the development of their arms and legs indicates they didn't spend much time in the trees. And they could walk upright, on two legs, when on the ground.

Formally dubbed Ardipithecus ramidus — which means root of the ground ape — the find is detailed in 11 research papers published Thursday by the journal Science.
"This is one of the most important discoveries for the study of human evolution," said David Pilbeam, curator of paleoanthropology at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

"It is relatively complete in that it preserves head, hands, feet and some critical parts in between. It represents a genus plausibly ancestral to Australopithecus — itself ancestral to our genus Homo," said Pilbeam, who was not part of the research teams.
Scientists assembled the skeleton from 125 pieces.
Lucy, also found in Africa, thrived a million years after Ardi and was of the more human-like genus Australopithecus.

"In Ardipithecus we have an unspecialized form that hasn't evolved very far in the direction of Australopithecus. So when you go from head to toe, you're seeing a mosaic creature that is neither chimpanzee, nor is it human. It is Ardipithecus," said White.

White noted that Charles Darwin, whose research in the 19th century paved the way for the science of evolution, was cautious about the last common ancestor between humans and apes.
"Darwin said we have to be really careful. The only way we're really going to know what this last common ancestor looked like is to go and find it. Well, at 4.4 million years ago we found something pretty close to it," White said. "And, just like Darwin appreciated, evolution of the ape lineages and the human lineage has been going on independently since the time those lines split, since that last common ancestor we shared."

Some details about Ardi in the collection of papers:

• Ardi was found in Ethiopia's Afar Rift, where many fossils of ancient plants and animals have been discovered. Findings near the skeleton indicate that at the time it was a wooded environment. Fossils of 29 species of birds and 20 species of small mammals were found at the site.

• Geologist Giday WoldeGabriel of Los Alamos National Laboratory was able to use volcanic layers above and below the fossil to date it to 4.4 million years ago.

• Ardi's upper canine teeth are more like the stubby ones of modern humans than the long, sharp, pointed ones of male chimpanzees and most other primates. An analysis of the tooth enamel suggests a diverse diet, including fruit and other woodland-based foods such as nuts and leaves.

• Paleoanthropologist Gen Suwa of the University of Tokyo reported that Ardi's face had a projecting muzzle, giving her an ape-like appearance. But it didn't thrust forward quite as much as the lower faces of modern African apes do. Some features of her skull, such as the ridge above the eye socket, are quite different from those of chimpanzees. The details of the bottom of the skull, where nerves and blood vessels enter the brain, indicate that Ardi's brain was positioned in a way similar to modern humans, possibly suggesting that the hominid brain may have been already poised to expand areas involving aspects of visual and spatial perception.

• Ardi's hand and wrist were a mix of primitive traits and a few new ones, but they don't include the hallmark traits of the modern tree-hanging, knuckle-walking chimps and gorillas. She had relatively short palms and fingers which were flexible, allowing her to support her body weight on her palms while moving along tree branches, but she had to be a careful climber because she lacked the anatomical features that allow modern-day African apes to swing, hang and easily move through the trees.

• The pelvis and hip show the gluteal muscles were positioned so she could walk upright.

• Her feet were rigid enough for walking but still had a grasping big toe for use in climbing.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the University of California, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and others.

http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/us_sci_before_lucy/33589198/SIG=10rasgdoq/

http://www.sciencemag.org/

My comments:

Maybe one human kind evolved from the apes and the other from Ardi... Now who knows? Could it be that the Autistics and the Neurotypicals actually had different ancestors?

Wasn't it Temple Grandin who said that Autistics think like the animals? Well, maybe they evolved from the animals. Maybe that is because they are more in tune with the Earth, the nature, the cosmos...

Maybe we just different human species. Hey science, did you ever think of that???

How Autism can be misdiagnosed and go undetected in adults

Experts ponder link between creativity and mood disorders

By Elizabeth Landau CNN


(CNN) -- The works of David Foster Wallace, who committed suicide September 12, 2008, are famous for their obsessively observed detail and emotional nuance.

David Foster Wallace reportedly battled depression for 20 years.

My note: He did not battle depression, but the side-effects of living as an autistic (most probably with Asperger's) in a non-autistic society. The visible depression signs was one of the side-effects that all autistics deal with throughout their lives! It is ignorance that killed this adult with Autism not his depression!!!
Unfortunately, before Autism became as known as it is today, and the mood ups and downs connected with autism became more known, many autistics were misdiagnosed with a range of conditions including bipolar disorder, chronic depression, eating disorders, etc. If the dots were correctly connected, the larger image that would appear would have been Autism. Unfortunately, most who treat people with mood or mental disorders, do not dig that deep. They just see whatever is most prominent in a patient's condition and label him that!

Certain characteristics of his prose -- hypersensitivity and constant rumination, or persistent contemplation -- reflect a pattern of temperament that some psychology researchers say connects mental illness, especially bipolar disorder and depression, with creativity.
There have been more than 20 studies that suggest an increased rate of bipolar and depressive illnesses in highly creative people, says Kay Redfield Jamison, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and author of the "An Unquiet Mind," a memoir of living with bipolar disorder.

My note: Bipolar and depression are two very obvious tell-tales of an adult undiagnosed autistic!!! It is the ignorance of scientists like this psychiatry professor that killed David Wallace Foster. Autism includes a high ability that is linked with creativity, and the hypersensitivity that artists have. Look at the list of symptoms of bipolar and compare them to those of Autism. See what I mean???

Experts say mental illness does not necessarily cause creativity, nor does creativity necessarily contribute to mental illness, but a certain ruminating personality type may contribute to both mental health issues and art.

"Unquestionably, I think a major link is to the underlying temperaments of both bipolar illness and depression, of reflectiveness and so forth," Jamison said. This theory could help explain why eminent artists throughout the history, from composer Robert Schumann to poet Sylvia Plath to Wallace -- suffered mood disorders.My note: All of these "mood disorders" are nothing more and nothing less than Autistic frustrations that surface as depression, when things do not go as we know they should, and extreme joy and emotional "high" when things go as we know they should.

"It's pretty clear if you read [Wallace's] books that he was a very obsessive, kind of ruminating guy," said Paul Verhaeghen, associate professor of psychology at Georgia Institute of Technology.
"You can see it in his sentences. ... They're breathless and they need to be annotated, and the annotations need to be annotated again."

My note: "Helloooo! He was autistic!!! Take a look at how Autism is connected with speech and the use of speech."

The research of Verhaeghen and colleagues shows when people are in a reflective mode, they may become more creative, depressed, or both. Previous research shows that when people are in a ruminating mode, they are more likely to be depressed, he said.
"If you think about stuff in your life and you start thinking about it again, and again, and again, and you kind of spiral away in this continuous rumination about what's happening to you and to the world -- people who do that are at risk for depression ," he said.

Verhaeghen, who is also a novelist and describes himself as a "somewhat mood disordered person," had a particular interest in the connection between creativity and this ruminating state of mind.
"One of the things I do is think about something over and over and over again, and that's when I start writing," he said.

Sensitivity to one's surroundings is also associated with both creativity and depression, according to some experts.
Creative people in the arts must develop a deep sensitivity to their surroundings -- colors, sounds, and emotions, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. Such hypersensitivity can lead people to worry about things that other people don't worry about as much, he said, and can lead to depression.

My note: Wrong again you fools! They are autistic, and that is why they are hypersensitive and that is why they express this hypersensitivity into art. You got the whole chain reaction upside down you fools!!!

"The arts are more dangerous [than other professions] because they require sensitivity to a large extent," he said. "If you go too far you can pay a price -- you can be too sensitive to live in this world."
Terence Ketter is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University.

Ketter and his colleagues compared a healthy control group with bipolar patients, depression patients, and a control group of graduate students in writing and the arts.
They found that people with bipolar disorder scored better -- up to about 50 percent higher -- on creativity tests than the healthy control group. The creative control group had about the same increase in score relative to the healthy control group.
But more research is needed, says Ketter. The study does not explain the connection or show a causal relationship, he said.

Some have pointed out that being engaged in creative pursuits makes a person more open to experience, while others say the pressure of being engaged in the arts causes negative emotion, according to Ketter.
Still, the temperamental characteristics in question are thought to be somewhat inherent.
"It's a little hard to argue that engaging in creative activity could create the temperament, and it may be a little bit more possible that this temperament gives you a creative advantage," he said.

Verhaeghen's theory that rumination contributes to negative emotions generally sounds plausible and in some ways consistent with his own views, said Ketter.
Many hope that this type of research will be helpful in developing better strategies to manage and detect mental illness. These strategies can sometimes mean the difference between life and death.
"Tragically, mood disorders can still present a sudden death in people who have been undiagnosed and untreated, and die from the illness," says Ketter.

My note: YES!!! Undiagnosed and untreated for Autism because that is what they have! They were high functioning so they were never noticed. And as children no one knew what autism was back then. Wake up fools. People are dying!!!

More specifically, Ketter says, just as heart disease sometimes presents itself for the first time as a fatal heart attack, mental illness sometimes presents itself for the first time as a suicide.

An appreciation of David Foster Wallace

AUTISM and SOCIETY - Who is truly ill?

You see if we have two things, and one of them (Society in this case) decided to label the other (Autism) a disorder (a developmental disorder in this case), we need to question how sound is that decission, and what interests are being served by that label!

My personal belief is that what motivates Society and Science that pulls Society's strings is greed more than anything else. Science has become our Society's new religion, since we have now put all our faith towards preventing death (the one thing that holds our ultimate fear) in Science's hands, where previourly these were God's hands.

And like the good ol' "Church", Science is the one that now controls Society. Maybe it is about time we change that "In God we Trust", into "In Science we Trust" as this would far better apply to today's beliefs.

We have allowed Science to take over, simply because we refuse to accept our own weaknesses and vulnerabilities, we refuse to see the inevitable truth that we will all, no matter what, one day die! We wish to avoid this truth, we wish to pay any amount to change this truth, we are willing to make any sacrifice to avert this from happening. We used to pray to God, offer things of value, offer sacrificies such as the lives of others, whether humans or animals, to ensure we would be kept well, and of course... ALIVE!

Yet, this endless game with death came to be a very profitable industry. The promise of eternal youth, of eternal health, of eternal life has become the core of today's Society, where the cosmetics industry, the pharmaceutical industry and whole mecical world have become our new Gods!

To them we sactrifice our income, to them we sacrifice animals (we call them laboratory animals), to them we also sacrifice humans. Ourselves, and our children. Truly, nothing has really changed much since the dark Middle Ages. It has only become more hip, more acceptable, more easily accessed, more integraded into our daily lives. We think about taking medications or not, as little as we think about using toilet paper or not.

We fill our bodies with chemicals that are absorbed either through our digestive system or through our skin, hair, nails, lips, you name it. We never even think what substances are inside our shampoo bottles, are nail polish, our lipstick, our deodorants. Yet, we worry that some mercury inside a vaccine, might cause Autism!

This is how blind we have become to what is happening to us and around us. How we are being "drugged" through small amounts of different chemicals day after day... We then wonder how our Human kind is changing, giving birth to Autistic children.

Mass media has a big saying into this, too. They can also gain profit from this huge money-making industry by reporting new findings, by creating sensationalism out of nothing, by making us accept easier and easier the dark practices that happen around us, by making us immune to them through over reporting, though commercialism, through osmosis. At the end we neither see or hear any more what is happening and how we are being used, abused, misled, drugged, poisoned and yes... killed.

I will not sit here and repeat things others have said better than I ever could. I will just add here the links to articles that explain, support and analyze the fact that Science has turned us all into laboratory animals, abusing our ultimate fear of death and desease, and has allowed medical doctors, psychiatrists, etc. to exploit us like never before.

Ultimately, it is Society that has gone ill, that has become a disorder, a viral infection that is slowly killing our Human kind. It is Society that is creating more illnesses than it can cure, so that we remain eternaly dependant on their practices while it feeds on us.

Read on, there is plenty to take into account the next time you read about Autism and how it is the worst developmental disorder, a true epidemic, a danger to Society and social rules. Think deep what ends serve this Society and the social rules.

Who are behind this "Society" and who make these social rules. Then wonder whether Autism is not yet another scapegoat, another diversion from what truly is the point here: How dependant have we become to the endless dream of a magic pill that cures all illness, including death!

- How Pharma Giants Are Getting Rich By Calling Our Life Problems 'Medical Disorders'

- Mental Illness or Social Sickness?

- ADD/ADHD: Mental Illness or Social Oppression?

I rest my case.

A Time Comes When Silence is Betrayal

On April 4, 1967 -- one year before his death -- Martin Luther King spoke at Riverside ChurchNew York City saying these same words: "A time comes when silence is betrayal".

Now is that time.

It is with sadness and dismay that I write to you this evening. Alex Barton my son, was ostracized by his kindergarten teacher last year for being autistic.

This evening, Mike Lannon and the school board members of Saint Lucie County Schools decided that the civil rights of people with autism, and those who do not fit their idea of perfect do not matter.

http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/jun/10/st-lucie-county-school-board-allows-portillo-keep-/

ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Former Morningside elementary teacher Wendy Portillo said she hopes to return to teaching in local schools this fall, following a unanimous vote Wednesday evening by the school board that lets her keep tenure and contract, a decision that comes more than one year after she lead her kindergarten students to vote classmate Alex Barton out of class.

“I’m overjoyed,” Portillo said after an emotional 90-minute hearing in which more than a dozen teachers and parents urged the school board to relent in the punishment. “I’m happy that I’ll be able to go back to doing what I love to do.”

The hearing was interrupted by applause after each and every speaker supported Portillo. Many who spoke blamed the incident on a lack of adequate policies by the school system to help teachers deal with disruptive students.

Alex was in the process of being diagnosed with a high-functioning form of autism when the incident took place May 21, 2008.

School Board Website:
http://www.stlucie.k12.fl.us/

Sadly,
Melissa Barton
melissabarton@yahoo.com

---------------------
Unfortunately, this is the reality for many children with autism and Asperger's Syndrome. They are systematically being removed from the formal education framework and left on the sidelines of education and society in general.

This reality is the majority when it comes to Greece as a country.

Recently, the Government voted a law that allows School Principles to decide whether or not an autistic/Asperger child will be allowed to receive main-stream education in their school (usually beginning with kindergarten).

This way, autistic children in Greece are forced to enter "special school" education which will never allow them to enter main-stream education ever again. Once in a special school always in a spacial school. Special schools are just a form of "day care" that offer absolutely no form of education to the autistic child but meaningless activities that render its brain useless...

Wasn't it Socrates who warned against the tyranny of the majority?

Now I am beginning to know exactly what he meant. in

"Missing Link" Fossil Found; Proof of Evolutionary Theory?

May 20, 2009 by

47-Million-Year-Old Fossil Suggests Primate Link

"Ida," or Darwinius masillae, is just one of the many missing links that make their way to the divergence of primate evolutionary paths, one of which produced the primate forms of monkeys, apes, and humans, and another which produced animals such as lemurs. In fact, the gap is so large in the known fossil record, scientists are uncertain exactly where the divergence began.

Still, "Ida" has a lemur-like skeleton.

"Ida" also has primate characteristics such as opposable digits, grasping hands, nail-less fingers (as opposed to claws), and relatively short limbs. Since the newly discovered missing link is dated as being from the Eocene era, a time period from which few fossil records have been found, the fossil will be entered into the religion versus science debate.

For scientists, the more important aspect of Darwinius masillae is that it was found in Germany, which might point toward Europe as being more important in the evolutionary spectrum than was heretofore believed. And regardless of where "Ida" stands on the evolutionary path, one thing is unique about the fossil: It is amazingly preserved.

The 47-million-year-old fossil allowed paleontologists to study the fossilized record of fur, soft tissue, and even the remains of the animal's last meal, which consisted of seeds, fruits, and leaves.So is Jorn Hurum's "Ida" really a missing link, another stop on the evolutionary road that has led to the present, or is she just another singularly unique prehistoric creature? "Ida" is both. Her existence will not "prove" or "refute" the argument that every creature was "designed" for a singular purpose, nor will it prove or discount evolutionary theory.

The missing link found at the Messel Pit in Germany suggests itself as a link in the overall concept of evolution and the record of life on the planet, just another piece of the puzzle. Whether one believes that Darwinius masillae was created by an omniscient force or was the end result of ages of natural selection -- or a combination of the two methods of thinking -- becomes the province of subjective accommodation.

******
Source: NationalGeographic.com

GEE! THEY FOUND THE GENES...

... AND NOW THEY KNOW THAT AUTISM IS LINKED WITH RESPONCES TO THE ENVIRONMENT AND LEARNING!

The question of course is, do they know what that means or will they make again the wrong assumptions that support their wrong claims and offer again the wrong solutions? One thing is sure, if all the wrongs offer them riches, I already know what the outcome will be...

Autism Genes That Control Early Learning

New study confirms importance of early behavioral intervention in treating the disorder (how wish we could find a cure for the Science Disorder at hand...)

By Nikhil Swaminathan

A new genetic analysis of large, inbred Middle Eastern families found that genes linked to a heightened risk of autism are crucial to a child's ability to learn.
A group of scientists, led by a team at Children's Hospital Boston, has pinpointed six new genes that may contribute to autism, a disorder characterized by asocial behavior, difficulty communicating and repetitive actions that affects an estimated one in 150 children born in the U.S. each year.

They report in Science that all of the linked genes are involved in forming new and stronger connections, called synapses, between nerve cells in the brain, which is the biological basis of learning and memory formation."We're showing, on the one hand, that autism seems to have a large genetic component," says study co-author Christopher Walsh, chief of genetics at Children's Hospital. "But, the genes that are involved are actually those that are involved in responding to the environment and learning."

The findings, Walsh says, reinforces the importance of early diagnosis of autism and intervention, particularly behavioral therapy and learning in enriched environments through repeated activities. Performing these sorts of tasks may help strengthen cellular connections, compensating for the malfunctioning genes.The researchers studied 88 families in which one or more children had been diagnosed with autism, and the parents of each autistic child were cousins.

Marrying second and third—and even first cousins—is not uncommon in the Middle East, and by studying such families scientists were able to track recessive genetic traits (caused by mutations that only affect individuals with two copies of the flawed genes). Such traits occur far more frequently in inbred families than in others.The team found a total of six mutations affecting genes that had previously not been linked to autism.

The mutations came in the form of deletions, where part or all of both copies of the genes were missing in a child with the disorder. All of the genes are known to be involved in parts of the same process: creating and strengthening synapses.Normally, when nerve cells (neurons) activate in response to an environmental factor (such as processing a new face or a new sound), synapses between two active cells change to provide stronger connections so the cells can pass on information more efficiently.

As the brain develops, new connections are continuously formed among nerve cells, reinforced and, in some instances, broken as the brain starts to mature and divvy up its different functions to specific groups of neurons.

According to the findings, "All of the relevant mutations could disrupt the formation of vital neural connections during a critical period when experience is shaping the brain," says Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, Md. To wit, most children are diagnosed with autism between the ages of one and three years of age.Walsh says the team believes these deletions—which in most cases found here only remove some, but not all, of the DNA that makes up a gene—may mean that the genes can regain some of their normal function.

In fact, some of these genes may just be switched off. "This presents the possibility that in some kids we could get the gene going again without necessarily having to put it back in the brain," he says.Jim Sutcliffe, a molecular physiologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., in a Science editorial notes that the majority of autism research is geared toward prenatal development, even though the brain continues to develop well after a child is born. "Experience and environmental input play an important role in subsequent development," he says.

He calls the notion that learning in early life is disrupted by these autism genes "an intriguing proposal," but says that further research is needed to validate it.

Dan Geschwind, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, says that to test the hypothesis that autism genes affect synaptic strength, it would be important to examine the 20 to 30 other genes that have been implicated in autism and see which ones also play a role in strengthening neuronal connections. "If its a significant proportion," he says, "that would provide support for the hypothesis being put forward."

Walsh notes that many children diagnosed with autism tend to show vast improvement when they are placed in environments that allow them to practice learning repetitively. He says that these activities essentially train the neurons to make up for their lost function."Our work reinforces the importance of early intervention and behavioral therapy," he says. "The more we understand about genetics the more we understand how important the environment is."

Gee! Not much hope here either. The ISS (Idiotic Scientist Syndrome) has strike yet again!!!

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=autism-genes-that-control