review – ASF Weekly Science Podcasts

The word “mitochondrial deficits” gets thrown around a lot as a cause of autism, but what does this really mean? This week we interview Dr. Carisa Sirois from the University of Wisconsin, who recently published a review of how the mitochondria are involved in neurodevelopmental disorders. The ways mitochondria are involved in ASD are not … Continue reading "The Mitochondria in a...

This week’s podcast re-explores a question about a potential therapy for autism – minocycline. Minocycline is an antibiotic used to treat a number of different infections and some anecdotal reports have linked it to an improvement of autism. This has led to some experimental trials on minocycline, with inconclusive results. This week, a multisite study … Continue reading "What&#8...

Have you ever heard of an initiative called “Autistic Adults and other Stakeholders Engaged Together”? If you have, you know their goal is to ensure that autistic perspectives are included in future scientific research. They recently published an article that summarized the research that autistic people feel is critical, and what is missing, and what needs … Continue reading "Aut...

Thank you to the American Academy of Pediatrics for publishing an updated guide for their 67,000 members about identification, evaluation and management of children on the autism spectrum.  Pediatricians have a lot of things going on every day and could use a primer, or a condensed guide, on what the basic level of care should … Continue reading "The AAP Empowers Pediatricians to Help Kids w...

Happy 4th of July weekend.  This week’s podcast is devoted to the studies in the past few months focusing on autism treatments that didn’t make it into the regular weekly roundup.  They include data that shows promising results (peer networks and iPads) as well as those that didn’t do as well as hoped (social skills).  There … Continue reading "A 4th of July quickie on new...

Individual research studies are great.  But even better is when someone takes these studies and puts them together to see if one study shows the same thing another does, and if they do is the effect size consistent?  Sometimes you can only do this by going old school and pooling the data from the individual … Continue reading "Putting the pieces together around group social skills interventi...

The year 2016 was eventful for many reasons.  In this 20 minute podcast, we review some of the scientific discoveries that highlighted findings in causes, understanding, and treating ASD.  Featured more this year is studies on the sibling of individuals with ASD, so we are calling 2016 “The Year of the Sibling”  This review includes genetics, gene … Continue reading "And now&#823...

Hear what you missed if you were unable to attend the Seaver Autism Conference on September 25th!  Dr. David Skuse discusses “where are all the girls with autism”, summarizing evidence that some girls with high verbal IQ and autism might be missed, suggesting genes associated with high IQ may be protective against a diagnosis until … Continue reading "Where are all the girls with...

This week, ASF intern Priyanka Shah provides an 8 minute tutorial on the reading and interpretation of scientific literature.  It’s worth the listen.  It goes over what to pull from an abstract, what the different sections tell you about the study, where to get the paper if you can’t find it, and what are the … Continue reading "How to read scientific literature"