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What happens during sleep?

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During sleep, your brain is still active. It is turning all those things you learned during the day into long term memories through connections between the thalamus, hippocampus and frontal cortex. What happens in Profound Autism? How does the brain work during sleep and how will this knowledge lead to better sleep in people? Are there interventions already underway that are being tested that target sleep brainwaves? It can be hard to measure sleep, so in Part 2 of the Profound Autism Series, Dr. Dimitrios Mylonas from Harvard talks about his study to use portable home brain activity monitors that have been adapted for use in Profound Autism and an intervention based on this brain activity is being tested in other disorders. His study is now enrolling and is all remote, if you are interested in participating please email him at: DMYLONAS@mgh.harvard.edu

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Ribbit…Ribbit… frogs are the new mouse of ASD research

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You’ve heard a lot about CRISPR technology to manipulate gene expression. But what have scientists actually learned? Well, the cells in which DNA is manipulated could come from different animal models, including frogs and mice. These model systems are used to track brain development, sex differences, and the downstream effects of convergence of genetic manipulations of autism relevant genes on brain cells. They can be used, as one study demonstrated, to examine protective or resilience factors in the brain. This week we talk to Helen Willsey, PhD, at UCSF to hear about her research about manipulating genes in frog eggs and what it says about the female protective effect.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33497602/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33243861/

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How to be resilient

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Resilience is the quality that allows people to recover from severe trauma or other adverse events with their mental health somewhat intact. For many families, this international public health emergency is a traumatic event and coming out of this is going to require a lot of skills and training. Most of us have never experienced anything like this before and families with autism have additional burdens to deal with. We will be hosting a webinar about it on April 22nd with experts in the field, but in the meantime, this is a list of tips from licensed psychologists in the field.