Single Protein Targeted as Root Biological Cause of Several Childhood Psychiatric Disorders

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2012) — A new research discovery has the potential to revolutionize the biological understanding of some childhood psychiatric disorders. Specifically, scientists have found that when a single protein involved in brain development, called "SRGAP3," is malformed, it causes problems in the brain functioning of mice that cause symptoms that are similar to some mental health and neurological disorders in children. Because this protein has similar functions in humans, it may represent a "missing link" for several disorders that are part of an illness spectrum. In addition, it offers researchers a new target for the development of treatments that can correct the biological cause rather than treat the symptoms. 

This discovery was published in November 2012 print issue of The FASEB Journal.

"Developmental brain disorders such as schizophrenia, hydrocephalus, mental retardation and autism are among the most devastating diseases in children and young adults," said Dusan Bartsch, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Molecular Biology at the Central Institute of Mental Health at the University of Heidelberg in Mannheim, Germany. "We hope that our findings will contribute to a better understanding, and in the end, to better treatments for these disorders."

Bartsch and colleagues made this discovery using mice with the SRGAP3 protein inactivated. Then they conducted several experiments comparing these mice to normal mice. The mice with inactive SRGAP3 showed clear changes in their brains' anatomy, which resulted in altered behavior similar to certain symptoms in human neurological and psychiatric diseases. An involvement of SRGAP3 in different brain disorders could indicate that these disorders are possibly connected, as SRGAP3 is a key player in brain development. These different disorders could be connected via the SRGAP3 protein because they all emerge from disturbed development of the nervous system.

"Since Freud put biological psychiatry on the map, we've slowly increased our understanding of how mental health is dictated by chemistry," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "Eventually we'll understand the complex biology underlying most psychiatric illnesses, from genes to proteins to cell signaling to overt behaviors. Along the way, as in this report, we're likely to find single targets close to the roots of apparently different mental illnesses."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:R. Waltereit, U. Leimer, O. von Bohlen und Halbach, J. Panke, S. M. Holter, L. Garrett, K. Wittig, M. Schneider, C. Schmitt, J. Calzada-Wack, F. Neff, L. Becker, C. Prehn, S. Kutscherjawy, V. Endris, C. Bacon, H. Fuchs, V. Gailus-Durner, S. Berger, K. Schonig, J. Adamski, T. Klopstock, I. Esposito, W. Wurst, M. H. de Angelis, G. Rappold, T. Wieland, D. Bartsch. Srgap3-/- mice present a neurodevelopmental disorder with schizophrenia-related intermediate phenotypes. The FASEB Journal, 2012; 26 (11): 4418 DOI: 10.1096/fj.11-202317

People With Autism Possess Greater Ability to Process Information, Study Suggests

IT employee working. New research may help to explain the apparently higher than average prevalence of people with autism spectrum disorders in the IT industry. (Credit: © .shock / Fotolia)

ScienceDaily  — People with Autism have a greater than normal capacity for processing information even from rapid presentations and are better able to detect information defined as 'critical', according to a study published March 22 in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology. The research may help to explain the apparently higher than average prevalence of people with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in the IT industry.

Autism is a lifelong developmental disorder that affects social interaction, communication and, often, learning; however, people with autism show an increased ability to focus attention on certain tasks. Yet clinical reports backed up by some laboratory research show that these individuals can be more sensitive to the distracting effects of irrelevant stimuli, such as flashing lights or particular sounds, which can be easily ignored by people without the disorder.

Professor Nilli Lavie, from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at UCL, hypothesises that this combination of the ability to focus and a susceptibility to distraction might be caused by a higher than normal information processing capacity.

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"Our work on perceptual capacity in the typical adult brain suggests a clear explanation for the unique cognitive profile that people with autism show," she says. "People who have higher perceptual capacity are able to process more information from a scene, but this may also include some irrelevant information which they may find harder to ignore. Our research suggests autism does not involve a distractibility deficit but rather an information processing advantage."

Professor Lavie, together with Dr Anna Remington and Dr John Swettenham from the UCL Developmental Science department, tested this hypothesis on 16 adult volunteers with autism spectrum disorders and compared their results against those of 16 typical adults in a task to challenge their perceptual load capacity.

The task involved looking at a circle of letters flashed very briefly on the screen and searching for some 'target' letters. At the same time, the participants were also asked to detect a small grey shape that occasionally appeared outside the letter circle.

The Internet – A Geat Resource for Those Who Suffer from Mental Illness

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

It is possible to live with a mental illness, though it can be very trying at times. Information is vital in understanding one’s illness, coming to terms with it, and learning proactive and effective ways to manage it. Technology has allowed us access to information when and where we want it. And it provides a variety of different viewpoints, which can allow us to have a fuller, more meaningful understanding of a topic. When it comes to mental illness, this is vitally important.

From personal experience, I understand that the diagnosis of mental illness is hard to handle, even for someone who knows inside, that something just isn’t right. There is such a stigma associated with mental illness and there are stereotypical portrayals that may not match our own reality. However, at one’s fingertips is the ability to understand what you are dealing with just a little bit more.

Trusted sources of information

If you have been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness, or suspect that you may have one, it is understandable that you want to know more about it. There are a number of trusted medical education-related websites on the internet that are great resources in providing basic information. There are trusted resources that many of us have heard from such as WebMD and the National Institute of Mental Health. These sources can provide you with a basic overview of the symptoms of different afflictions, and are solid resources. Many of these sites also provide links to gather additional information, provide warning symptoms, and more resources.

Personal accounts and online support groups

There are many sites that are maintained by those who suffer from a given disorder. Bipolar groups, support groups for those with obsessive-compulsive disorder, and more. These are easy to find with targeted, keyword based searches on most search engines – such as “online OCD support group.” Here you will find personal accounts and individual tips and tricks that people who deal with the same thing you do have decided to share.

I found these sites to be very helpful, as it is so comforting to know that I am not alone, and hear success stories of people who have suffered from similar symptoms and experiences – this gives me hope. However, it is advised to understand that these are personal accounts and to not take any medical advice from these sites without consulting a professional.

Where we used to have to go to the library and hope there was material available to find out more about a given disorder, access to information that you can trust is now in the palm of your hand, or a few clicks of your mouse. It is empowering to educate yourself about mental illness, and connect with others who deal, or have dealt with the same things. You can find factual information, and also personal accounts and tips that have worked for others. When dealing with mental illness, these resources are priceless.

By Staff Writer, Jennifer Wilbanks

Scarborough sabotages autism - People like this we don't need!

"Below is a very well written article by Robin Morris. All of us who have children on the spectrum need to stand united against careless actions such as those perpetuated by Mr. Scarborough. He spoke foolishly and he needs to make amends for the harm he has caused."

• The Examiner
 |  BY: ROBIN HAUSMAN MORRIS

Yesterday, in one fell swoop, Joe Scarborough in an MSNBC interview singlehandedly sabotaged all efforts to humanize our children with autism.

Mr. Scarborough has transcended the title of “profiler”. During a discussion following the horrific events of murder in Colorado, Morning Joe decided to log in with his perspective: "Most of it has to do with mental health. You have these people that are somewhere, I believe, probably on the autism scale," said Scarborough, whose own son has Asperger's syndrome. "I don't know if that's the case here, but it happens more often than not. People that can walk around in society, they can function on college campuses, they can even excel on college campuses, but are socially disconnected." He then congratulated his own family’s support of his son, but highlighted the loneliness involved for those on the spectrum. "Again, I don't know the specifics about this young man, but we see too many shooters bearing the same characteristics mentally," Scarborough said.

While Joe Scarborough may not have realized the power of his words, he might need a lesson in humility. His talk show host status does not canonize his parenting or assessment of mental illness. Perhaps a more legible message might shock him. His reporting angle that he has chosen to highlight is on of bias; fodder for bigots. He has spurned discrimination, and this is reprehensible... READ MORE >>

Robin Hausman Morris, Autism & Parenting Examiner

A writer and mother of 23-year-old quadruplets (one with autism), Robin has gleaned extensive knowledge on autism and raising multiples. Send Robin a message or follow her on Twitter.

Finally, a video message from Kerry Magro with Aspergers says it all. Joe Scarborough, I Have Autism and Am Not a Murderer.

Video: I Have Autism and Am Not a Murderer

Interestingly, Joe did mention that we as a nation should have “comfort in a time of need” and that only a president can do what Obama did by addressing the nation and the families of victims. He went on to compliment Regan and Bush when they comforted the nation in time of tragedy. He should have stopped there... READ MORE >>

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ADD / ADHD drugs are NOT as effective as advertised

ADD / ADHD drugs are NOT as effective as advertised — These amphetamines are addictive, abused and harmful. “In contrast with nonmedicated children, children starting stimulant treatment between their fourth- and seventh-grade tests were more likely to decline in test performance. The crude probability of academic decline was 72.9% in mathematics and 42.9% in language arts.


See abstract below.

Autism in the News

"Navigating Autism" Is a Must-Have Guide for Parents Struggling ...

Live-PR.com

LOS ANGELES, CA - (Marketwire) - 07/17/12 - "Navigating Autism: The Essential How-to By Parents for Parents" : ctt.marketwire.com/?release=908182&id=180884

New evidence links immune irregularities to autism

Science Daily

the link between irregularities in the immune system and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism a decade ago. Since then, studies of postmortem brains and of

Special Needs, Special Mission: The Jewish Federation Sponsors ...

Dayton Business Journal

delegation representatives will share how they have successfully integrated young adults with autism into military service Throughout the mission, Israeli professionals

Caltech researchers find evidence of link between immune irregularitie ...

Bio-Medicine

the link between irregularities in the immune system and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism a decade ago. Since then, studies of postmortem brains and of

Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of Link between Immune Irregularitie ...

Caltech Daily News

the link between irregularities in the immune system and neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism a decade ago. Since then, studies of postmortem brains and of

Special Learning, Inc. Continues its Webcast Series with Four ...

Zecco

global provider of mobile technology applications and educational resources for the autism community, today announced its webcast schedule for July 2012. The monthly

Curemark Announces Executive Promotions

Syracuse Online

and strategic insight into our product pipeline as well as our Phase III trial for CM-AT in autism have been invaluable. As we maximize the value of our products

Communicating Support for Educational Success: Positive Messages ...

Newswise

Realize Highest Professional Vitality in 50s 4. Saliva and Pupil Size Differences in Autism Show System in Overdrive 5. Cornell, Stanford Nanoscience Pioneers Join

Autism expert speaks at UAF

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

FAIRBANKS ? A leading expert on autism will give a free public lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Schaible Auditorium in the Bunnell Building on the University of Alaska

Parent questionnaire may reveal early autism risk - 16 Jul 12

NetDoctor.co.uk

A questionnaire given to parents could help to identify children at risk of developing autism spectrum disorders (ASD) at just one year of age, scientists say.Researchers Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Is Autism an “Epidemic” or Are We Just Noticing More People Who Have It?

Emily Willingham (Twitter, Google+, blog) is a science writer and compulsive biologist whose work has appeared at Slate, Grist, Scientific American Guest Blog, and Double X Science, among others. She is science editor at the Thinking Person’s Guide to Autism and author of  The Complete Idiot’s Guide to College Biology.

Even though autism is now widely discussed in the media and society at large, the public and some experts alike are still stymied be a couple of the big, basic questions about the disorder: What is autism, and how do we identify—and count—it? A close look shows that the unknowns involved in both of these questions suffice to explain the reported autism boom. The disorder hasn’t actually become much more common—we’ve just developed better and more accurate ways of looking for it.

In March the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the newly measured autism prevalences for 8-year-olds in the United States, and headlines roared about a “1 in 88 autism epidemic.” The fear-mongering has led some enterprising folk to latch onto our nation’s growing chemophobia and link the rise in autism to “toxins” or other alleged insults, and some to sell their research, books, and “cures.” On the other hand, some researchers say that what we’re really seeing is likely the upshot of more awareness about autism and ever-shifting diagnostic categories and criteria.

Leo Kanner first described autism almost 70 years ago, in 1944. Before that, autism didn’t exist as far as clinicians were concerned, and its official prevalence was, therefore, zero. There were, obviously, people with autism, but they were simply considered insane. Kanner himself noted in a 1965 paper that after he identified this entity, “almost overnight, the country seemed to be populated by a multitude of autistic children,” a trend that became noticeable in other countries, too, he said.

In 1951, Kanner wrote, the “great question” became whether or not to continue to roll autism into schizophrenia diagnoses, where it had been previously tucked away, or to consider it as a separate entity. But by 1953, one autism expert was warning about the “abuse of the diagnosis of autism” because it “threatens to become a fashion.” Sixty years later, plenty of people are still asserting that autism is just a popular diagnosis du jour (along with ADHD), that parents and doctors use to explain plain-old bad behavior.

Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism sometimes known as “little professor syndrome,” is in the same we-didn’t-see-it-before-and-now-we-do situation. In 1981, noted autism researcher Lorna Wing translated and revivified Hans Asperger’s 1944 paper describing this syndrome as separate from Kanner’s autistic disorder, although Wing herself argued that the two were part of a borderless continuum. Thus, prior to 1981, Asperger’s wasn’t a diagnosis, in spite of having been identified almost 40 years earlier. Again, the official prevalence was zero before its adoption by the medical community.

And so, here we are today, with two diagnoses that didn’t exist 70 years ago (plus a third, even newer one:PDD-NOS) even though the people with the conditions did. The CDC’s new data say that in the United States, 1 in 88 eight-year-olds fits the criteria for one of these three, up from 1 in 110 for its 2006 estimate. Is that change the result of an increase in some dastardly environmental “toxin,” as some argue? Or is it because of diagnostic changes and reassignments, as happened when autism left the schizophrenia umbrella?

To most experts in autism and autism epidemiology, the biggest factors accounting for the boost in autism prevalence are the shifting definitions and increased awareness about the disorder. Several decades after the introduction of autism as a diagnosis, researchers have reported that professionals are still engaging in “diagnostic substitution”: moving people from one diagnostic category, such as “mental retardation” or “language impairment,” to the autism category. For instance, in one recent study, researchers at UCLA re-examined a population of 489 children who’d been living in Utah in the 1980s. Their first results, reported in 1990, identified 108 kids in the study population who received a classification of “challenged” (what we consider today to be “intellectually disabled”) but who were not diagnosed as autistic. When the investigators went back and applied today’s autism diagnostic criteria to the same 108 children, they found that 64 of them would have received an autism diagnosis today, along with their diagnosis of intellectual disability.

Further evidence of this shift comes from developmental neuropsychologist Dorothy Bishop and colleagues, who completed a study involving re-evaluation of adults who’d been identified in childhood as having a developmental language disorder rather than autism. Using two diagnostic tools to evaluate them today, Bishops’ group found that a fifth of these adults met the criteria for an autism spectrum diagnosis when they previously had not been recognized as autistic.

Another strong argument against the specter of an emergent autism epidemic is that prevalence of the disorder is notably similar from country to country and between generations. A 2011 UK study of a large adult population found a consistent prevalence of 1% among adults, “similar to that found in (UK) children” and about where the rates are now among US children. In other words, they found as many adults as there were children walking around with autism, suggesting stable rates across generations—at least, when people bother to look at adults. And back in 1996, Lorna Wing (the autism expert who’d translated Asperger’s seminal paper) tentatively estimated an autism spectrum disorder prevalence of 0.91% [PDF] based on studies of children born between 1956 and 1983, close to the 1% that keeps... READ MORE >>

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Common Underlying Factors Found In Autism, Schizophrenia And Bipolar Disorder

New research led by a medical geneticist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine points to an increased risk of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) among individuals whose parents or siblings have been diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

The findings were based on a case-control study using population registers in Sweden and Israel, and the degree to which these three disorders share a basis in causation "has important implications for clinicians, researchers and those affected by the disorders," according to a report of the research published online in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

"The results were very consistent in large samples from several different countries and lead us to believe that autism and schizophrenia are more similar than we had thought... READ MORE >>

Our findings suggest that ASD, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder share etiologic risk factors," the authors state. "We suggest that future research could usefully attempt to discern risk factors common to these disorders."

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The impact of children with ASD on parent mental health

The impact of child problem behaviors of children with ASD on parent mental health: The mediating role of acceptance and empowerment

Full attract and PDF: Sage Journals

Raising a child with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has often been associated with higher levels of parenting stress and psychological distress, and a number of studies have examined the role of psychological processes as mediators of the impact of child problem behavior on parent mental health. The current study examined the relations among child problem behavior, parent mental health, psychological acceptance, and parent empowerment. Participants included... READ MORE >>

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Researchers Identify Protein Necessary for Behavioral Flexibility

Released: 5/17/2012 8:00 AM EDT
Embargo expired: 5/24/2012 12:00 PM EDT
Source: New York University

Newswise — Researchers have identified a protein necessary to maintain behavioral flexibility, which allows us to modify our behaviors to adjust to circumstances that are similar, but not identical, to previous experiences. Their findings, which appear in the journal Cell Reports, may offer new insights into addressing autism and schizophrenia—afflictions marked by impaired behavioral flexibility.

Our stored memories from previous experiences allow us to repeat certain tasks. For instance, after driving to a particular location, we recall the route the next time we make that trip. However, sometimes circumstances change—one road on the route is temporarily closed—and we need to make adjustments to reach our destination. Our behavioral flexibility allows us to make such changes and, then, successfully complete our task. It is driven, in part, by protein synthesis, which produces experience-dependent changes in neural function and behaviour. [ READ MORE ]

New York University | Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net