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ASPartOfMe
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01 Feb 2018, 1:26 am

New Autism Therapy Shown To Restore Social Behavior Through Brain Stimulation

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New research out of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas shows those social behaviors could be restored through a process called "neuromodulation," or brain stimulation.

Peter Tsai directed the study from the Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. Researchers stimulated a specific part of the cerebellum in mice to correct social impairments. They learned this particular region near the brain stem that had been thought to have only roles in coordinating movement is also critical for autistic behaviors.

"I feel like one of the things that makes us uniquely human in some ways is that social ability and that desire to group together and work as communities and as societies," Tsai says.

If that's impaired -- or if you don't seek it out -- you no longer belong to that community or society and that will create a significant impact on the joy you seek out in life, he says

Using neuromodulation, the researchers were able to demonstrate that they could change brain activity in various different parts of a mouse's brain by stimulating, inhibiting and modulating these particular cerebellar regions.

The changes made in the brain resulted in changes in the social behavior of the mice.

The next step is to make sure the same technique would be safe to conduct on children.

"I remember seeing a kid during my residency who had a cerebellar injury of some variety, and this kid did not come in with balance problems, he didn't come in with motor problems. He came in and he looked like a kid with autism, and I said, 'This makes no sense at all. How does this compute?'

"And then I said, 'Well, maybe this is just an exception...' Then, the next kid came in with kind of inflammation of the cerebellum, then other kids came in, and they looked autistic, and I was like 'OK, maybe I shouldn't be ignoring this.'"

Tsai says when you look at studies of autism, "the most consistent finding is cerebellum. There's a cerebellar abnormality in these kids with autism. ... All of these [studies] really highlight the cerebellum as being disrupted in kids and individuals with autism."


Mr. Psai is making a lot of assumptions.


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mrshappyhands
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01 Feb 2018, 1:36 am

Wow. He's quite the narcissistic one, isn't he? It seems that he finds one thing to support his hypothesis and just latches on to that and ignores everything else that disagrees with it.

What would have happened to humanity had individuals not chose to discontinue association with their neanderthal friends due to realizing they were different? Is it a bad thing or is it nature at play? To try and make all children act and feel the same just seems wrong to me and like the back story for a great dystopian novel.

There are just too many fallacies in his logic, IMO.



Darmok
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01 Feb 2018, 1:36 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
"I feel like one of the things that makes us uniquely human in some ways is that social ability and that desire to group together and work as communities and as societies," Tsai says....

Using neuromodulation, the researchers were able to demonstrate that they could change brain activity in various different parts of a mouse's brain by stimulating, inhibiting and modulating these particular cerebellar regions.

The changes made in the brain resulted in changes in the social behavior of the mice.

So he's using mice to study something that makes us "uniquely human."

I hope his lab technique is better than his logic. :roll:


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01 Feb 2018, 2:48 am

Limitations of the study were identified and discussed?
Conclusions justified by the data collected?
Independent and competent peer review?
Results replicated by independent researchers?
Safety issues for target population addressed?
Sampling error accounted for?

And so on and so on.

Not only are mice not people, I have yet to hear how genuinely autistic mice are 1) diagnosed and 2) identical to humans. But that could be inconvenient for these ambitious researchers who use PR as a career move and fundraiser.
And that's very often all these "breakthrough" claims are. It's hard for me to take any of them seriously anymore.

The neuroscience ones are currently dominant as the ones most likely to be publicity hounds, and they have been for a few years now. When the money moves on, another crop of publicists will take their place. I am - obviously - very cynical about the motives and robustness of their claims. I am tired.

What these studies ALWAYS ignore is "within group" differences. We know that ASD brains are not all identical; we know that neurological differences within the group are vast. But the researchers ignore this, and it act as if all AS people have cookie-cut neurology.

Nor does it occur to them that the range of neurological differentiation may be an effect of AS, and not a cause. Because many genes are involved, and no-one inherits exactly the same set, then within group difference is a very important confounding variable, and that well educated people are blind to this is immensely dismaying. It suggests they must have skipped a lot of classes on the scientific method, and particularly on methodological conundrums. I am very tired. I can hardly read this crap anymore without a fatigue attack.