Low-cost, at-home treatment involves sensory exercises with common household items.

Michael Leon, UC Irvine

Children with autism showed significant improvement after six months of simple sensory exercises at home using everyday items such as scents, spoons and sponges, according to UC Irvine neurobiologists.

They found that a treatment known as environmental enrichment led to notable gains in male subjects between the ages of 3 and 12. Results appear online in Behavioral Neuroscience.

Study co-authors Cynthia Woo and Michael Leon randomly assigned 28 boys to one of two groups, balanced for age and autism severity. For half a year, all subjects participated in standard autism therapies, but those in one group also had daily sensory enrichment exercises.

Parents of these children were given a kit containing household products to increase environmental stimulation, including essential-oil fragrances such as apple, lavender, lemon and vanilla. The boys smelled four of these scents a day and listened to classical music each evening.

In addition, the parents conducted twice-daily sessions of four to seven exercises with their children involving different combinations of sensory stimuli – touch, temperature, sight and movement among them. Each session took 15 to 30 minutes to complete.

After six months of therapy, 42 percent of the children in the enrichment group showed significant improvement in behaviors commonly affected by autism – such as relating to people, having typical emotional responses and listening – compared with 7 percent in the standard-care group.

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Center brings together many disciplines to respond to President Obama’s “grand challenge.”

(From left) Nick Spitzer, Ralph Greenspan and Terry Sejnowski.

Responding to President Barack Obama’s “grand challenge” to chart the function of the human brain in unprecedented detail, UC San Diego has established the Center for Brain Activity Mapping (CBAM). The new center, under the aegis of the interdisciplinary Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UC San Diego, will tackle the technological and biological challenge of developing a new generation of tools to enable recording of neuronal activity throughout the brain. It will also conduct brain-mapping experiments and analyze the collected data.

Ralph Greenspan – one of the original architects of a visionary proposal that eventually led to the national BRAIN Initiative launched by President Obama in April – has been named CBAM’s founding director.

UC San Diego Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla, who attended Obama’s unveiling of the BRAIN Initiative, said: “I am pleased to announce the launch of the Center for Brain Activity Mapping. This new center will require the type of in-depth and impactful research that we are so good at producing at UC San Diego. We have strengths here on our campus and the Torrey Pines Mesa, both in breadth of talent and in the scientific openness to collaborate across disciplines, that few others can offer the project.”

Greenspan, who also serves as associate director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UC San Diego, said CBAM will focus on developing new technologies necessary for global brain-mapping at the resolution level of single cells and the timescale of a millisecond, participate in brain mapping experiments, and develop the necessary support mechanisms for handling and analyzing the enormous datasets that such efforts will produce.

Brain-mapping discoveries made by CBAM may shed light on such brain disorders as autism, traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer’s – and could potentially point the way to new treatments, Greenspan said. The technologies developed and advances in understanding brain networks will also likely have industrial applications outside of medicine, he said.

The new center will bring together researchers from neuroscience (including cognitive science, psychology, neurology and psychiatry), engineering, nanoscience, radiology, chemistry, physics, computer science and mathematics.

“An essential component of the center will be its close relationships with other San Diego research institutions and with industrial partners in the region’s high-tech and biotech clusters,” said Nick Spitzer, distinguished professor of neurobiology and director of the Kavli Institute for Brain and Mind at UC San Diego.

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UC researchers part of Obama initiative to map the brain

A modified therapy lessens the severity of the condition and can perhaps alleviate it altogether.

Lynn Koegel, UC Santa Barbara

Most infants respond to a game of peek-a-boo with smiles at the very least, and, for those who find the activity particularly entertaining, gales of laughter. For infants with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), however, the game can be distressing rather than pleasant, and they’ll do their best to tune out all aspects of it –– and that includes the people playing with them.

That disengagement is a hallmark of ASD, and one of the characteristics that amplifies the disorder as infants develop into children and then adults.

A study conducted by researchers at the Koegel Autism Center at UC Santa Barbara has found that replacing such games in favor of those the infant prefers can actually lessen the severity of the infants’ ASD symptoms, and, perhaps, alleviate the condition altogether. Their work is highlighted the current issue of the Journal of Positive Behavioral Interventions.

Lynn Koegel, clinical director of the center and the study’s lead author, described the game-playing protocol as a modified Pivotal Response Treatment (PVT). Developed at UCSB, PRT is based on principles of positive motivation. The researchers identified the activities that seemed to be more enjoyable to the infants and taught the respective parents to focus on those rather than on the typical games they might otherwise choose. “We had them play with their infants for short periods, and then give them some kind of social reward,” Koegel said. “Over time, we conditioned the infants to enjoy all the activities that were presented by pairing the less desired activities with the highly desired ones.” The social reward is preferable to, say, a toy, Koegel noted, because it maintains the ever-crucial personal interaction.

“The idea is to get them more interested in people,” she continued, “to focus on their socialization. If they’re avoiding people and avoiding interacting, that creates a whole host of other issues. They don’t form friendships, and then they don’t get the social feedback that comes from interacting with friends.”

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UC Davis, Yale study finds association between trophoblast inclusions and autism risk.

Photo courtesy of Patrick Lynch, Yale University

A study by researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute and the Yale University School of Medicine has found that more than 95 percent of the placentas of infants who are among those at the greatest risk of developing autism contained abnormal cells, called trophoblast inclusions, suggesting that the abnormality may hold promise as a very early marker for autism risk.

The researchers cautioned that the study found an association between trophoblast inclusions and autism risk, rather than a direct correlation with autism itself. The study is published online today (April 24) in Biological Psychiatry.

“There’s no evidence that the trophoblast inclusions themselves have any direct impact on neurodevelopment,” said Cheryl Walker, assistant professor in the UC Davis Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and lead author for the study. “Rather, they are likely a symptom of altered physiology or a genetic predisposition, particularly given their association with other genetic abnormalities, and are almost certain to be triggered by environmental exposures.

“Given that they appear to result from dysregulation in cell proliferation, candidate exposures that we may explore in the future include physiologic states that can promote growth excess, including maternal obesity, excess gestational weight gain, diabetes, nutritional factors, and exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals — all of which may influence growth in fetal tissues like the placenta and brain.”

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UCLA researchers will lead network of U.S. academic centers to explore experimental drugs.

James McCracken, UCLA

UCLA has been awarded a $9 million contract by the National Institute of Mental Health for an ambitious effort to rapidly study promising new drugs that may help restore normal development and brain function in children with autism spectrum disorders.

UCLA researchers will create and lead a network of U.S. academic centers that will carry out early “high risk/high reward” studies of experimental medications over a three-year period. The goal of the project, New Experimental Medicine Studies: Fast–Fail Trials in Autism Spectrum Disorders, is to determine within weeks rather than years (“fast”) if a particular pharmacological compound is working or not (“fail”).

Recent progress in identifying the genes and biological components involved in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) holds great promise for the identification of life-changing treatments for individuals of all ages, said the project’s principal investigator, Dr. James McCracken, a professor of psychiatry and director of the division of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

“Current medical treatments are commonly prescribed by physicians for ASD but only to manage difficult behaviors, like aggressiveness, hyperactivity and self-injury,” McCracken said. “Such treatments can be important and helpful, but they do not impact the core problems of the disorders.

“This is definitely the most exciting time yet to be involved in treatment research for ASD,” he added. “Our basic science colleagues are generating enormous information on the likely underlying causes of this common and often disabling condition. We are well positioned to apply the basic science and find drugs that make a difference.”

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UC Davis to host “Immunological Factors, Genes, and the Environment in Autism.”

UC Davis MIND Institute

The UC Davis MIND Institute will host an update for parents and health-care professionals on research exploring the growing body of evidence suggesting associations between environmental mechanisms, immunological susceptibility and autism on Saturday, June 1.

“Immunological Factors, Genes, and the Environment in Autism,” will be held in the MIND Institute auditorium at 2825 50^th St., Sacramento. Physicians, other health-care professionals and parents are invited to attend in person or view the presentations via webcast. The event is a collaboration of the Autism Research Institute, the MIND Institute, and Autism Speaks.

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UCSF study makes significant progress toward mouse model of human autism.

Elliott Sherr, UC San Francisco

For the first time, researchers have linked autism in a mouse model of the disease with abnormalities in specific regions of the animals’ chromosomes.

The regions contain genes associated with aberrant brain development and activity.

“These discoveries in mice may eventually pave the way towards understanding autism in human patients and devising new treatments,” said co-senior author, Elliott H. Sherr, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric neurologist at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and professor of neurology at UC San Francisco.

The findings are reported in a study published today (April 15) in PLOS One.

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NIH grant helps UCLA scientist study disorder in African Americans.

Daniel Geschwind, UCLA

The National Institutes of Health has awarded Dr. Daniel Geschwind, director of the UCLA Center for Autism Research and Treatment, a five-year, $10 million grant to continue his research on the genetic causes of autism spectrum disorders and to expand his investigations to include the genetics of autism in African Americans.

The new network grant, which will fund collaborative work by Geschwind and experts at other autism centers around the country, is part of the NIH’s Autism Centers of Excellence program, which was launched in 2007 to support coordinated research into the causes of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and the discovery of new treatments.

Autism spectrum disorders are complex developmental disorders that affect how a person behaves, interacts with others, communicates and learns. According to the Centers for Disease Control, ASD affects approximately 1 in 88 children in the U.S.

Geschwind’s award will allow him to build on his earlier work identifying genetic variants associated with an increased susceptibility to autism while adding an important new emphasis. The research network he leads — which also includes scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Emory University, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University and Yale University — aims to recruit at least 600 African American families who have a child diagnosed with an ASD for genetic testing.

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$13M will establish an Autism Center of Excellence.

Sally Rogers, UC Davis

Autism researchers at the UC Davis MIND Institute have received a prestigious $13 million award from the National Institutes of Health to establish an Autism Center of Excellence and Treatment Network, making the MIND Institute one of only nine such centers in the United States.

Announced on World Autism Awareness Day, the Autism Center of Excellence, or ACE, award underwrites a research program aimed at advancing the quality, pace and coordination of autism research and is led by Sally J. Rogers, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and principal investigator. Rogers will collaborate with scientists at Vanderbilt University, Nashville; the University of Washington, Seattle; and Harvard to conduct the research. The award will support two separate treatment studies designed to provide the most up-to-date data possible on the most effective methods of treating very young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

“While progress in research on ASD has been rapid, complex questions remain about the causes of these disorders, how to detect them very early and how to intervene most effectively,” said National Institute of Mental Health Director Thomas Insel. “Centers receiving ACE funding have marshaled the interdisciplinary expertise and technical resources needed to move the science forward as quickly as possible.”

Rogers said that supporting and improving the outcomes of young children with autism and other disabilities is a national commitment and health priority, and a community and family necessity.

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New insights could enhance our understanding of human development, cancer therapies and autism.

Janine LaSalle, UC Davis

Researchers at UC Davis and the University of British Columbia have shed new light on methylation, a critical process that helps control how genes are expressed. Working with placentas, the team discovered that 37 percent of the placental genome has regions of lower methylation, called partially methylated domains (PMDs), in which gene expression is turned off. This differs from most human tissues, in which 70 percent of the genome is highly methylated.

While PMDs have been identified in cell lines, this is the first time they have been found in regular human tissue. In addition to enhancing our understanding of epigenetics, this work could influence cancer research and help illuminate how environmental toxins affect fetal development. The paper was published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Since it was unraveled more than ten years ago, the human genome has been the focus of both popular interest and intense scientific focus. But the genome doesn’t act alone; there are many factors that influence whether genes are turned on or off. One of these is an epigenetic process called methylation, in which a group of carbon and hydrogen atoms (a methyl group) attaches to DNA, adjusting how genes are expressed.

“I like to think of epigenetics as a layer on top of your genetic code,” said senior author Janine LaSalle, professor of medical microbiology and immunology. “It’s not the DNA sequence but it layers on top of that — and methylation is the first layer. Those layers provide a lot of information to the cells on where and when to turn on the genes.”

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An old drug gives hope for new treatment in autism.

Robert Naviaux, UC San Diego

Autism results from abnormal cell communication. Testing a new theory, researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine have used a newly discovered function of an old drug to restore cell communications in a mouse model of autism, reversing symptoms of the devastating disorder.

The findings are published in today’s (March 13) issue of the journal PLOS ONE.

“Our (cell danger) theory suggests that autism happens because cells get stuck in a defensive metabolic mode and fail to talk to each other normally, which can interfere with brain development and function,” said Robert Naviaux, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and co-director of the Mitochondrial and Metabolic Disease Center at UC San Diego. “We used a class of drugs that has been around for almost a century to treat other diseases to block the ‘danger’ signal in a mouse model, allowing cells to return to normal metabolism and restore cell communication.”

“Of course, correcting abnormalities in a mouse is a long way from a cure for humans,” said Naviaux, “but we are encouraged enough to test this approach in a small clinical trial of children with autism spectrum disorder in the coming year. This trial is still in the early stages of development. We think this approach – called antipurinergic therapy or APT – offers a fresh and exciting new path that could lead to development of a new class of drugs to treat autism.”

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are complex disorders defined by abnormalities in the development of language, social and repetitive behaviors. Hundreds of different genetic and environment factors are known to confer risk. In this study, nearly a dozen UC San Diego scientists from different disciplines collaborated to find a unifying mechanism that explains autism. Their work is the result of one of just three international “Trailblazer” awards given by the group Autism Speaks in 2011.

Describing a completely new theory for the origin and treatment of autism using APT, Naviaux and colleagues introduce the concept that a large majority of both genetic and environmental causes for autism act by producing a sustained cell danger response – the metabolic state underlying innate immunity and inflammation.

“When cells are exposed to classical forms of dangers, such as a virus, infection or toxic environmental substance, a defense mechanism is activated,” Naviaux explained. “This results in changes to metabolism and gene expression, and reduces the communication between neighboring cells. Simply put, when cells stop talking to each other, children stop talking.”

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UC Davis psychiatry professor awarded by California Legislative Women’s Caucus.

Sally Rogers, UC Davis

Sally J. Rogers, UC Davis professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, was honored on Monday during the Breaking the Glass Ceiling Awards of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus. The awards celebrate the successes of California women in breaking barriers in the fields of science, technology, the arts, the judiciary and beyond. The ceremony was part of the Assembly’s celebration of Women’s History Month during the Floor Session.

Today we’re celebrating pioneers in science, civil rights, the arts, education, our armed forces, our courts, and our government,” said Assemblymember Bonnie Lowenthal, (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus. “In each of our honorees we see the best of the California spirit.”

Rogers was one of 11 award recipients. She was acknowledged as the developer of the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) method of early autism intervention. The intervention is effective for improving cognition and language skills among very young children with autism, normalizing their brain activity, decreasing their autism symptoms and improving their social skills. A study of ESDM by Rogers and her colleagues was named number five among the top 10 medical breakthroughs of 2012 by Time magazine.

“The glass ceiling, the invisible barrier that holds people back due to perceptions based on characteristics not related to their abilities, impedes people with autism, just as it does women and other groups,” Rogers said of receiving the accolade. “We hope that our work in early autism will help some of these children break glass ceilings for themselves as they grow up.”

Other honorees included, Frances A. Arnold, co-founder of Gevo Inc., and the only woman to receive the Draper Prize from the U.S. National Academy of Engineering; Weili Dai, co-founder of the Marvell Technology Group and the only woman co-founder of a global semiconductor company; Marie Zoe Dunning, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, one of the first military members to be prosecuted under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell;” and Jennifer Harris Trosper, who sent two rovers to Mars as part of the NASA Mars Exploration Rover Mission.

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