PLT Test Blog

Children with deprived childhoods become adults with smaller brains Autism is not just about genetics and environmental factors; the potential of nurture should not be overlooked. Today’s post was prompted by another follow-on study quantifying the benefit of nurture in early childhood. In the past I did look in depth at the long running US study called the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). A similar study is the English and Romanian Adoptees (ERA) study.   They are relevant to this autism blog because they quantify the benefit of nurture in very early childhood and more importantly the lack of nurture. Quantifying the Benefits of Stimulation over Neglect in Early Childhood You may wonder why all these studies relate to Romania. Under  the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, contraception and abortion were forbidden, because he wanted population growth. Then in 1982 he decided that foreign debt is bad and must be paid off urgently; much of the country's economic o...

Today’s post is a standalone introduction to genetics, as relevant for lay people interested in autism. The scientists among you will likely know all this and more, but many more people are talking about genes and genetic testing these days. Genetics is the domain of some very clever scientists and to fully understand this field would require a great deal of effort.   Often the cleverest people are the least able to explain things to the rest of us. Some equally clever researchers think that there will be so many possible autism genes that it is better to focus on the much smaller number of shared affected pathways.  I stand with the latter group. Confused? He should be. As is often the case, even a basic understanding of the principles does allow you to draw meaningful practical conclusions from the ever-expanding pool of research. In most cases of idiopathic autism there is over/under expression of a very large number of genes.   Most of these genes do their job an...