05-07-2006, 06:19 PM
Copied from CNN. I suppose this article will be or already is in Time.
"Her parents, therapists, nutritionists and teachers had spent years preparing the way. They had moved mountains to improve her sense of balance, her sensory perception and her overall health. They sent in truckloads of occupational and physical therapy and emotional support.
But it wasn't until the fall of 2005 that traffic finally began to flow in the other direction.
Hannah, whose speech was limited to snatches of songs, echoed dialogue and unintelligible utterances, is profoundly autistic, and doctors thought she was most likely ***.
But on that October day, after she was introduced to the use of a specialized computer keyboard, Hannah proved them wrong. "Is there anything you'd like to say, Hannah?" asked Marilyn Chadwick, director of training at the Facilitated Communication Institute at Syracuse University.
With Chadwick helping to stabilize her right wrist and her mother watching, a girl thought to be incapable of learning to read or write slowly typed, "I love Mom."
More than 60 years after autism was first described by American psychiatrist Leo Kanner, there are still more questions than answers about this complex disorder. But slowly, steadily, many myths about autism are falling away, and researchers are finding some surprises.
Autism is almost certainly, like cancer, many diseases with many distinct causes. It's well known that there's a wide range in the severity of symptoms --from profound disability to milder forms like Asperger syndrome, in which intellectual ability is generally high but social awareness is low.
Indeed, doctors now prefer the term Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). But scientists suspect there are also distinct subtypes, including an early-onset type and a regressive type that can strike as late as age 2.
Once thought to be mainly a disease of the cerebellum, a region in the back of the brain that integrates sensory and motor activity, autism is increasingly seen as a pervasive problem with the way the brain is wired.
The distribution of white matter, the nerve fibers that link diverse parts of the brain, is abnormal, but it's not clear how much is the cause and how much the result of autism.
The immune system may play a critical role in the development of at least some types of autism. This suggests some new avenues of prevention and treatment.
Many classic symptoms of autism -- spinning, head banging, endlessly repeating phrases -- appear to be coping mechanisms rather than hard-wired behaviors. Other classic symptoms -- a lack of emotion, an inability to love --can now be largely dismissed as artifacts of impaired communication. The same may be true of the supposedly high incidence of mental retardation.
The world of autism therapy continues to be bombarded by cure-of-the-day fads. But therapists are beginning to sort out the best ways to intervene.
And while autism is generally a lifelong struggle, there are some reported cases in which kids who were identified as autistic and treated at an early age no longer exhibit symptoms.
Indeed, most researchers believe autism arises from a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and environmental triggers. An identical twin of a child with autism has a 60 percent to 90 percent chance of also being affected with the disorder. And the sibling of a child with autism has about a 10 percent chance of also having it.
Luckily for Hannah, her voice and thoughts are being heard.
Since learning to type, she has begun to speak a few words reliably -- "yes," "no" and the key word "I" -- to express her desires.
All this seems miraculous to her parents. "I was told to give up and get on with my life," says her mother. Now she and her husband are thinking about saving for college. "
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/07/cover.s...index.html
I particularly liked it when they compared autism with cancer!...
...!
"Her parents, therapists, nutritionists and teachers had spent years preparing the way. They had moved mountains to improve her sense of balance, her sensory perception and her overall health. They sent in truckloads of occupational and physical therapy and emotional support.
But it wasn't until the fall of 2005 that traffic finally began to flow in the other direction.
Hannah, whose speech was limited to snatches of songs, echoed dialogue and unintelligible utterances, is profoundly autistic, and doctors thought she was most likely ***.
But on that October day, after she was introduced to the use of a specialized computer keyboard, Hannah proved them wrong. "Is there anything you'd like to say, Hannah?" asked Marilyn Chadwick, director of training at the Facilitated Communication Institute at Syracuse University.
With Chadwick helping to stabilize her right wrist and her mother watching, a girl thought to be incapable of learning to read or write slowly typed, "I love Mom."
More than 60 years after autism was first described by American psychiatrist Leo Kanner, there are still more questions than answers about this complex disorder. But slowly, steadily, many myths about autism are falling away, and researchers are finding some surprises.
Autism is almost certainly, like cancer, many diseases with many distinct causes. It's well known that there's a wide range in the severity of symptoms --from profound disability to milder forms like Asperger syndrome, in which intellectual ability is generally high but social awareness is low.
Indeed, doctors now prefer the term Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). But scientists suspect there are also distinct subtypes, including an early-onset type and a regressive type that can strike as late as age 2.
Once thought to be mainly a disease of the cerebellum, a region in the back of the brain that integrates sensory and motor activity, autism is increasingly seen as a pervasive problem with the way the brain is wired.
The distribution of white matter, the nerve fibers that link diverse parts of the brain, is abnormal, but it's not clear how much is the cause and how much the result of autism.
The immune system may play a critical role in the development of at least some types of autism. This suggests some new avenues of prevention and treatment.
Many classic symptoms of autism -- spinning, head banging, endlessly repeating phrases -- appear to be coping mechanisms rather than hard-wired behaviors. Other classic symptoms -- a lack of emotion, an inability to love --can now be largely dismissed as artifacts of impaired communication. The same may be true of the supposedly high incidence of mental retardation.
The world of autism therapy continues to be bombarded by cure-of-the-day fads. But therapists are beginning to sort out the best ways to intervene.
And while autism is generally a lifelong struggle, there are some reported cases in which kids who were identified as autistic and treated at an early age no longer exhibit symptoms.
Indeed, most researchers believe autism arises from a combination of genetic vulnerabilities and environmental triggers. An identical twin of a child with autism has a 60 percent to 90 percent chance of also being affected with the disorder. And the sibling of a child with autism has about a 10 percent chance of also having it.
Luckily for Hannah, her voice and thoughts are being heard.
Since learning to type, she has begun to speak a few words reliably -- "yes," "no" and the key word "I" -- to express her desires.
All this seems miraculous to her parents. "I was told to give up and get on with my life," says her mother. Now she and her husband are thinking about saving for college. "
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/05/07/cover.s...index.html
I particularly liked it when they compared autism with cancer!...
...!