Inside the Mind of a Child With Autism

New York Times

Therapists who specialize in autism often use a child’s own interests, toys or obsessions as a way to connect, and sometimes to reward effort and progress on social skills. The more eye contact a child makes, for example, the more play time he or she gets with those precious maps or stuffed animals.

But now a group of scientists and the author of a new book are suggesting that those favorite activities could be harnessed in a deeper, more organic way. If a child is fascinated with animated characters like Thomas the Tank Engine, why not use those characters to prompt and reinforce social development?

Millions of parents do this routinely, if not systematically, flopping down on the floor with a socially distant child to playact the characters themselves.

“We individualize therapy to each child already, so if the child has an affinity for certain animated characters, it’s absolutely worth studying a therapy that incorporates those characters meaningfully,” said Kevin Pelphrey, director of the child neuroscience laboratory at Yale.

He and several other researchers, including John D. E. Gabrieli of M.I.T., Simon Baron-Cohen of the University of Cambridge andPamela Ventola of Yale, are proposing a study to test the approach.

The idea came from Ron Suskind, a former Wall Street Journal reporter whose new book “Life, Animated” describes his family’s experience reaching their autistic son, Owen, through his fascination with Disney movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast.” It was Mr. Suskind’s story that first referred to ‘“affinity therapy.” He approached the researchers to put together a clinical trial based on the idea that some children can develop social and emotional instincts through the characters they love.

Experts familiar with his story say the theory behind the therapy is plausible, given what’s known from years of studying the effects of other approaches.

“The hypothesis they have put forward is sound, and absolutely worth studying,” said Sally J. Rogers, a professor of psychiatry at the MIND Institute of the University of California, Davis. “If you think about these animated characters, they’re strong visual stimuli; the emotions of the characters are exaggerated, those eyebrows and the big eyes, the music accompanying the expressions. Watching those characters is the way many of us learned scripts that are appropriate in social situations.”

But Dr. Rogers cautioned that using animated characters is hardly the key to reaching all autistic children. Many are fascinated by objects or topics without inherent social content — maps, for instance. But for those who fixate on movies, television shows or animated characters, affinity therapy makes sense, she said.

The researchers brought together by Mr. Suskind have written a proposal for a study of the approach. It calls for a 16-week trial for 68 children with autism, ages 4 to 6. Half the children would receive affinity therapy, using the shows or movies they love as a framework to enhance social interaction, building crucial abilities like making eye contact and joint play.

The other half, the control group, would engage in the same amount of interaction with a therapist but in free play, led by the child’s interest. Therapists have had some success using the latter approach, most notably in a therapy called Floortime, developed by Dr. Stanley Greenspan.

In autism therapy, progress is measured in increments and tends to be slow, especially in severely affected children, experts say. But the disorder — the autism spectrum, as it’s known — includes a very diverse group of children whose prospects for improvement are unpredictable and individual. Some children develop social skills relatively quickly, while others are stubbornly unreachable.

Dr. Pelphrey said that the affinity approach would incorporate many elements of pivotal response treatment, a type of therapy being intensely studied. It incorporates a system of rewards into normal interactions between a therapist (or parent) and the child, playing together.

Sarah Calzone of Stratford, Conn., said her son, now 7 years old, became more socially adept in a pivotal response trial at Yale. “The way it works is that, for instance, one time the therapist was playing with my son, blowing bubbles,” Ms. Calzone said. “Then the therapist stopped and looked away. Of course my son still wanted to see the bubbles, so he had to stop, too, and look in the same direction, then make eye contact and ask to continue.”

Those two responses, making eye contact and so-called perspective taking, recognizing another person’s point of view, developed quickly in the therapy. Her son, who has engaged in various therapies nearly every day for most of his life, is now in regular classes at school.

Dr. Pelphrey said that affinity therapy would deploy some of the same techniques, with the therapist playacting a favorite character and inhabiting the scenes with the child.

“Instead of watching Thomas the Tank Engine as a reward, for instance, we would have the child enter the social setting, with Thomas and Percy and the other characters,” and learn through them about eye contact, joint play and friendship, he said. The scientists plan to submit their study proposal to the National Institute of Mental Health for funding.

“The whole thing has been exciting, and a little weird,” said Mr. Suskind, now a senior fellow at Harvard, “having these leading neuroscientists listen to me and say, ‘O.K., what can we do to help?’ ”

By BENEDICT CAREY

Sensory Integration for Autism

Sensory Integration

By Cindy Hatch-Rasmussen, M.A., OTR/L

Children and adults with autism, as well as those with other developmental disabilities, may have a dysfunctional sensory system. Sometimes one or more senses are either over- or under-reactive to stimulation. Such sensory problems may be the underlying reason for such behaviors as rocking, spinning, and hand-flapping. Although the receptors for the senses are located in the peripheral nervous system (which includes everything but the brain and spinal cord), it is believed that the problem stems from neurological dysfunction in the central nervous system--the brain. As described by individuals with autism, sensory integration techniques, such as pressure-touch can facilitate attention and awareness, and reduce overall arousal. Temple Grandin, in her descriptive book, Emergence: Labeled Autistic, relates the distress and relief of her sensory experiences.

Sensory integration is an innate neurobiological process and refers to the integration and interpretation of sensory stimulation from the environment by the brain. In contrast, sensory integrative dysfunction is a disorder in which sensory input is not integrated or organized appropriately in the brain and may produce varying degrees of problems in development, information processing, and behavior. A general theory of sensory integration and treatment has been developed by Dr. A. Jean Ayres from studies in the neurosciences and those pertaining to physical development and neuromuscular function. This theory is presented in this paper.

Sensory integration focuses primarily on three basic senses--tactile, vestibular, and proprioceptive. Their interconnections start forming before birth and continue to develop as the person matures and interacts with his/her environment. The three senses are not only interconnected but are also connected with other systems in the brain. Although these three sensory systems are less familiar than vision and audition, they are critical to our basic survival. The inter-relationship among these three senses is complex. Basically, they allow us to experience, interpret, and respond to different stimuli in our environment. The three sensory systems will be discussed below.

Tactile System: The tactile system includes nerves under the skin's surface that send information to the brain. This information includes light touch, pain, temperature, and pressure. These play an important role in perceiving the environment as well as protective reactions for survival.

Dysfunction in the tactile system can be seen in withdrawing when being touched, refusing to eat certain 'textured' foods and/or to wear certain types of clothing, complaining about having one's hair or face washed, avoiding getting one's hands dirty (i.e., glue, sand, mud, finger-paint), and using one's finger tips rather than whole hands to manipulate objects. A dysfunctional tactile system may lead to a misperception of touch and/or pain (hyper- or hyposensitive) and may lead to self-imposed isolation, general irritability, distractibility, and hyperactivity.

Tactile defensiveness is a condition in which an individual is extremely sensitive to light touch. Theoretically, when the tactile system is immature and working improperly, abnormal neural signals are sent to the cortex in the brain which can interfere with other brain processes. This, in turn, causes the brain to be overly stimulated and may lead to excessive brain activity, which can neither be turned off nor organized. This type of over-stimulation in the brain can make it difficult for an individual to organize one's behavior and concentrate and may lead to a negative emotional response to touch sensations.

Vestibular System: The vestibular system refers to structures within the inner ear (the semi-circular canals) that detect movement and changes in the position of the head. For example, the vestibular system tells you when your head is upright or tilted (even with your eyes closed). Dysfunction within this system may manifest itself in two different ways. Some children may be hypersensitive to vestibular stimulation and have fearful reactions to ordinary movement activities (e.g., swings, slides, ramps, inclines). They may also have trouble learning to climb or descend stairs or hills; and they may be apprehensive walking or crawling on uneven or unstable surfaces. As a result, they seem fearful in space. In general, these children appear clumsy. On the other extreme, the child may actively seek very intense sensory experiences such as excessive body whirling, jumping, and/or spinning. This type of child demonstrates signs of a hypo-reactive vestibular system; that is, they are trying continuously to sti mulate their vestibular systems.

Proprioceptive System: The proprioceptive system refers to components of muscles, joints, and tendons that provide a person with a subconscious awareness of body position. When proprioception is functioning efficiently, an individual's body position is automatically adjusted in different situations; for example, the proprioceptive system is responsible for providing the body with the necessary signals to allow us to sit properly in a chair and to step off a curb smoothly. It also allows us to manipulate objects using fine motor movements, such as writing with a pencil, using a spoon to drink soup, and buttoning one's shirt. Some common signs of proprioceptive dysfunction are clumsiness, a tendency to fall, a lack of awareness of body position in space, odd body posturing, minimal crawling when young, difficulty manipulating small objects (buttons, snaps), eating in a sloppy manner, and resistance to new motor movement activities.

Another dimension of proprioception is praxis or motor planning. This is the ability to plan and execute different motor tasks. In order for this system to work properly, it must rely on obtaining accurate information from the sensory systems and then organizing and interpreting this information efficiently and effectively.

Implications: In general, dysfunction within these three systems manifests itself in many ways. A child may be over- or under-responsive to sensory input; activity level may be either unusually high or unusually low; a child may be in constant motion or fatigue easily. In addition, some children may fluctuate between these extremes. Gross and/or fine motor coordination problems are also common when these three systems are dysfunctional and may result in speech/language delays and in academic under-achievement. Behaviorally, the child may become impulsive, easily distractible, and show a general lack of planning. Some children may also have difficulty adjusting to new situations and may react with frustration, aggression, or withdrawal.

Evaluation and treatment of basic sensory integrative processes is performed by occupational therapists and/or physical therapists. The therapist's general goals are: (1) to provide the child with sensory information which helps organize the central nervous system, (2) to assist the child in inhibiting and/or modulating sensory information, and (3) to assist the child in processing a more organized response to sensory stimuli.

Inside the Brain of a Person with Autism

I always wonder what is actually going on inside the brain of a person with Autism. This article provides some insight into this idea. 

Much like a computer, the brain relies on intricate wiring to process and transmit information. Scientists have discovered that in people with autism, this wiring is faulty, leading to misfiring in communications between brain cells.

In the brain, nerve cells transmit important messages that regulate body functions -- everything from social behavior to movement. Imaging studies have revealed that autistic children have too many nerve fibers, but that they're not working well enough to facilitate communication between the various parts of the brain. Scientists think that all of this extra circuitry may affect brain size. Although autistic children are born with normal or smaller-than-normal brains, they undergo a period of rapid growth between ages 6 and 14 months, so that by about age four, their brains tends to be unusually large for their age. Genetic defects in brain growth factors may lead to this abnormal brain development.

Scientists also have discovered irregularities in the brain structures themselves, such as in the corpus callosum (which facilitates communication between the two hemispheres of the brain),amygdala (which affects emotion and social behavior), and cerebellum (which is involved with motor activity, balance, and coordination). They believe these abnormalities occur during prenatal development.

In addition, scientists have noted imbalances in neurotransmitters -- chemicals that help nerve cells communicate with one another. Two of the neurotransmitters that appear to be affected are serotonin (which affects emotion and behavior) and glutamate (which plays a role in neuron activity). Together, these brain differences may account for autistic behaviors.

Scientists continue to look for clues to the origins of autism. By studying the genetic and environmental factors that may cause the condition, they hope to develop tests to identify autism earlier, as well as new treatment methods.

Several research studies are looking at the link between genes and autism. The largest of these is the National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR) Autism Genome Project. This collaborative effort, conducted at approximately 50 research institutions in 19 countries, is poring through the 30,000 genes that make up the human genome in a search for the genes that trigger autism.

Other autism studies include:

• Using animal brain models to study how neurotransmitters are impaired in children with autism
• Testing a computer-based program that would help autistic children interpret facial expressions
• Examining brain images to discover which areas are active during the obsessive and repetitive behaviors of autism
• Continuing to investigate the link between thimerosal and autism

Source: http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/autism/autism3.htm