PLT Test Blog

Monty, now aged 11 with ASD, has an assistant who comes in the afternoon to run our ABA-inspired home program, let’s call her Stella. Stella is a student training to be a teacher for deaf people, so her knowledge of ABA comes from her time with Monty.  Nobody here uses ABA to teach the deaf. Her latest task was to try and teach 3 eight year old children to count to ten.  The problem being that two of the children are deaf and can only say “yes” and “no” and the third child is deaf, autistic and non-verbal. Using ABA she managed to teach the two deaf children to count out loud to ten and to match objects marked with each number.  Very good and the regular teachers were very impressed. My comment was that it was a pity nobody taught them to say something more useful.  How about “hello”, “my name is Tom” etc. What about the deaf boy with autism?  It turns out, where we live, if you are deaf and have other “complex needs” you do not get a cochlear implant. Cochlear ...

Sytrinol (Tangeretin), sacrificial Gummy Bear and Gingerol Today’s post follows on from an earlier one that introduced the term RASopathy.  A RASopathy is a disease characterized by over-activation of the RAS protein. RASopathies are of interest because if you have one, you are highly likely to also have autism. RAS dysfunction is also present in many types of cancer and there are existing drugs to inhibit RAS signaling.  It has been claimed that:- "If RAS proves to be a key player in autism …  it might suggest new treatments for autism, as many cancer drugs inhibit RAS signaling." Regular readers of the Simons Foundation autism blog may have read the following: RAS pathway, a potentially unifying theory of autism     Cancer pathway connects autism to set of rare disorders If RAS proves to be a key player in autism, she says, it might suggest new treatments for autism, as many cancer drugs inhibit RAS signaling. RAS-based interventions My Polypill already has o...

              An Enantiomer is like a mirror image, so there are two versions of the “same” molecule one called R- and one called  S- Some people are still looking to obtain Arbaclofen to treat autism and Fragile-X, they regularly stumble upon this blog. A couple of years ago there was a lot of interest in Arbaclofen (R-baclofen), a GABA B drug, which is, in effect, a special version of a cheap existing drug called Baclofen .  Baclofen is generally used to treat spasticity, but also alcoholism and even hiccups. As we saw in earlier posts, the drug Baclofen is a mixture of R-Baclofen and S-Baclofen. The research showed that their action is different and that S-Baclofen reduced the effect of R-baclofen.   So in some modes of action, pure R-Baclofen would have much greater effect than the regular Baclofen mixture. If you use the "index by subject" on this blog, which is a tab at the top, you can find the posts that relate to Arbaclofen. Arb...