The word “autismus”, which once described the symptoms of schizophrenia, was coined in 1910 by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who may have referred to modern day autism without even realizing it. Today, scientists certainly know more about autism than they did 100 years ago, but the demand for further research remains high. Organizations throughout central New York have been working persistently on research regarding the disease for years. With a recent lecture “Autism in Central New York: Research and Practice” and a new study being conducted, Cornell University has become a welcome addition to the group.

On Saturday, Oct. 24, participants from Cornell’s Department of Human Development and representatives from other institutions conducted a lecture to provide an update on current neurobiological theories of autism and its relations to therapeutic practices for people with autism spectrum conditions, their parents educators and other caregivers. The lecture’s first speaker, Asst. Prof. Matthew Belmonte, human development, has had first hand experience with autism: both his older brother and his niece have the disease.

Belmonte’s research has, so far, shown that short-range, local connections between brain cells may be abnormally strong in families affected by autism, whereas long-range connections may be abnormally disrupted just in those family members who develop autism. “It looks like what is running in these families is some sort of different style and different timing of brain activation. This certainly relates to this sort of sticky style of attention where you can’t disengage,” he said. “We think what might make the difference between autism and not autism within a family is just how efficiently people implement the different patterns of brain activation.”

Licensed psychologist and Director of Autism Services at the Racker Center, Karen Fried, also participated in the lecture. Fried’s research mainly focuses on early diagnosis, intensive behavioral intervention, teaching, and the integration of support from families, schools and communities. An area of concern that Fried discussed was the availability of continuing education and employment for adults on the “autism spectrum.”

“My sense is that with adults on the spectrum, education stops for them at [a certain point] and that is a source of frustration for me,” Fried said. Even though she works primarily with autistic youngsters at the Racker Center, she said that “[The center] has residences for adults with developmental disabilities and they just opened one for four or five young men with autism,” which is crucial, given the inability of many autism patients to live independently even throughout adulthood.

Antonio Persico, an associate professor of physiology at the Universitá “Campus Bio-Medico” and director of the Laboratory of Molecular Psychiatry and Psychiatric Genetics at the Fondazione Santa Lucia in Rome, spoke at the lecture as well, and provided insight into the interaction of genetic and environmental factors that are often associated with autism. While autism has been proven to be 90 percent genetically inheritable, Persico expressed concern that all the genes that have been found to be associated with autism are only associated, meaning that they increase risk, vulnerability and susceptibility but they are not necessarily causing the disease. “There are plenty of people walking down the street carrying the same gene variants and they are not autistic,” he said.

Persico also briefly discussed the somewhat controversial link between childhood vaccinations and autism. While many argue that mercury and the preservative thimerosal found in many vaccines, cause autism, Persico was not quick to agree. Instead, he discussed the finding that the cerebellums of normal individuals and the cerebellums of individuals with autism are quite different.

“If you look with a microscope,” he said, “you can see that in the cerebellum of a normal person, the cells are well positioned with obvious boundaries while in the autistic person [the cells] are not well positioned at all. When cells don’t position properly, they generate abnormal neural connections. This happens during the first or early second trimester in pregnancy.” He then went on to explain why the theory that vaccinations cause autism is quite faulty: “Autism is a prenatal and early onset disease. You cannot take the brain of a normal baby, vaccinate that brain and have the cells move around the brain to become abnormal,” he said.

The lecture featured other specialists as well. Evdokia Anagnostou and Bill Hudenko provided information about autistic brain function and its hesitant response to drugs as well as family interactions of family members with autistic children, respectively.

In addition to hosting this autism-update lecture, Matthew Belmonte and Dr. Barbara Ganzel, human ecology, are conducting a study of normal versus autistic cognition using video game environments at Cornell. As part of the study, children 10 to 15 years of age will be given an IQ test, have their head measured and receive a laptop computer on which the child will play a video game designed to test various cognitive skills. According to Belmonte, complex skills develop over the course of a person’s childhood from more basic skills.

“Everyone has different combinations of these skills and everyone is better at some of them and worse at others,” he explained. “The question is whether some combinations cluster together, that is, whether being better at certain skills makes one more likely to be better at others, and how this might differ in children with autism spectrum conditions. Answering this question will help us sort out how autistic brain development differs from non-autistic brain development.”