PLT Test Blog

Now if the tittle makes sense to you, either you are a Prozac fan, or you were around in the 1940s and 50s when there actually was a vitamin P. This blog is about autism, and in the US lots of such kids are prescribed the powerful antidepressant Prozac. We are more interested in the other vitamin P; these days they are called flavonoids.   This post will meander into other health problems but will return to ASD later on. Flavonoids are found in plants and there are 5,000 of them.   In plants they have various functions, one of which is to provide colour (usually yellow, red and blue); in humans it is proposed that certain flavonoids may account for the beneficial properties of certain foods, ranging from chocolate to red wine. There are many food supplements sold that contain flavonoids, three of the popular ones seem to be:-   ·          Rutin ·          Quercetin ·     ...

Things seem to move slowly in the world of autism research. Since the 1970s it has been discussed that oxytocin might be a wonder hormone that could make you feel better.   The problem was that it cannot cross the BBB (blood brain barrier).  Oxytocin secreted from the pituitary gland cannot re-enter the brain because of the BBB. Instead, the behavioral effects of oxytocin are thought to reflect release from centrally projecting oxytocin neurons, different from those that project to the pituitary gland. Oxytocin is destroyed in the gastrointestinal tract, so must be administered by injection or as a nasal spray.   Because of the BBB any injected oxytocin should fail to enter the brain.   The nasal method of delivery uses the nasal membrane as a means of transferring the oxytocin.   But when it passes through that membrane it surely enters the blood and then will struggle to cross the BBB.   Note that most of oxytocin’s primary functions are outside of the...

Reviewing the literature on autism, various terms are used to classify the various shades of autism.- ·          Autism ·          High Functioning autism ·          Asperger’s syndrome ·          Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD)   The trend coming from the US is to classify all the disorders as a single disorder, and then by widening the definition, draw in an even greater pool of subjects; hence the so-called autism epidemic. This is extremely un-scientific and indeed unhelpful.   Autism is just a collection of observable and indeed measurable behaviors.   The extent to which a subject is affected by each type of behavior varies wildly. When a patient goes to his doctor, an initial investigation might involve taking temperature, measuring pulse, examining ear, nose and throat.   The doctor does not sim...

Unless you are a music teacher, you probably do not know what is solfège, or solfeggio .   I did not know what it was, but I am reliably informed that if you want to progress with your piano playing, you need to learn it.   The system has been in use as a pedagogical aid since it was developed by Guido D'Arrezzo in the eleventh century . I have two piano playing sons; Ted, aged 12, and Monty, aged 9.   Monty, as you will know, has ASD. Who do you think is going to be the first to learn solfège?    It’s going to be Monty. Ted is not amused.

Stanford University vs. Peter (INSEAD) I only remember two things from my BIO (Behaviour in Industrial Organisations) class, many years ago at Imperial College in London.   Both were mildly amusing. The first was that lecturer thought it was wonderful that the head of my engineering department would sometimes come to work with his things in a plastic shopping bag, rather than in a smart briefcase.   The rather lefty lecturer of this token, non-technical, course thought the highly paid Professor was truly “one of us” and he was demonstrating this with his choice of bag.   In reality, I think he just picked up what was nearest to his front door and he just did not care if somebody saw him walking down Exhibition Road with a Tesco bag. The second thing was the wonderful sounding “ Garbage Can Model of Decision Making ”.   The more I read about autism on the web and in the literature, the more I think about garbage cans; so I decided to go back and see what that mod...