Autism Genes that control Early Learning
Autism is a mental disorder where the people have trouble with communication, doing things repeatedly, and it causes antisocial behavior. Every year 150 babies are born with autism in the United States.
The Children's Hospital Boston has scientists who discovered six more genes. They hadn't been linked to autism in the past. The things wrong with them were usually due to deletion, mainly of the genes that help in smooth connections. These genes help to create a tight and smooth connection between nerves in the brain. These genes also deal with learning and responses to the world/environment.
This discovery shows that with an early diagnosis of autism followed by treatment can improve the affects of autism. They use behavioral therapy and enriched environments for learning at a young age in hopes to strengthen the connections in the brain. The mutations damage the connections in the brain during a crucial age of development. Since only part of the gene is deleted, not all of the DNA, it's possible that some of the function can be regained. It has been shown that children with autism improve when they are put in places where repetitive learning happens. This trains the neurons not missing to pick up the slack from the deleted neurons.
This article gives hope to families who have a baby diagnosed with autism. There isn't a cure for autism, so anything that would improve the situation would do wonders for a family. This article hits home for me. I have an eighteen year old autistic sister. She functions pretty well, but still is hard to manage at times. She has gotten semi worse as she grew older. This article makes me wonder how she would be different if she had received treatment when she was first diagnosed. Would it have helped her or done nothing? I will never know how it would be if she was different. God had some other plan for her, me, and my family.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=autism-genes-that-control
4 Comments:
Good job Kayla! I thought it was very interesting to learn about how autism is caused and how it affects the smooth connection between nerves in the brain, especially because we just studied the brain.It is very optimistic that since only part of the gene is deleted, that some function can be regained. It would totally make sense that through the use of behavioral therapy at an early age that one's autism could improve through repetitive sistuations and practice.
Having never really known much about autism, I just lumped it with everything in my head as mentally handicapped. Everytime I read articles like this, I am amazed at what science and medicine can do. I think it is awesome that they might be able to treat autism. It also makes sense that because only part of the gene is deleted that function could be regained. Thinking of your sister as I read this article, I can't help but think about how it could have helped her and your whole family. Hopefully it will be able to help many families in the future.
Learning about autism is very interesting to me because it seems to be more and more common. It's very encouraging that kids who are diagnosed can strengthen the connections in their brains through behavioral therapy. I think further research will be very beneficial as researchers learn how to help children with autism.
This was intresting to learn about how autism works. Therefore scientists have been able to find out how to help this and stop its terrible effects. It makes perfect since to me that its best stoped at an early age. I find that that would seem to be true just cause the body is in such a developmental stage when young.
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