Article from Psychiatry-?? Autism is NOT a psychosis !

[Guest guest]

Doris,

Are you saying that doesn't catch on the cues by your facial

expressions and tone of voice or that he does?

I know Lindsey will respond more affectively when I give pronounced

facial expressions and/ or change the tone of my voice to a more

sterness of a voice. This has been occurring for a long time now.

I just would appreciation some clarification.

Also, wanted to say since Dr. Goldberg has been right all along in

regards to these seizures some of our children unfortunately experience,

it is A TRAGEDY that society and more sophisticated medicines hasn't

reached our children yet.

Here in SC a Bill was ALMOST past for our children to receive via

Insurances/Medicaid over $15,000 a year for Speech and other related

therapies and it went thru all the necessary channels successfully until

it reached our Governor and he vetoed this Bill.

He obviously doesn't have a Child or a Grandchild afflicted with ASD's

and he obviously doesn't realize this worldwide epidemic is going to

affect all of us. How much of a percentage of our retirement will go

directly back to GOV'T to house our children due to medical society

turning their backs on our kids. 20%, 30% of our retirement monies

or more-???? Just a thought !!

Michele C. Davies

Mauldin, SC

PS ~ I am Davies again my Husband left and did us all a favor--- for

he stole from me and almost wiped out my Lindsey's savings. So I

am a Single Mom again, but will never stop fighting for my child.

_________________________________________________________________

The underlined/highlighted areas are mentioned in my

son's SPECT scans.

Reading Affect in the Face and Voice

Neural Correlates of Interpreting Communicative Intent in Children and

Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorders

A. Ting Wang, PhD; S. Lee, BA; n Sigman, PhD; Mirella Dapretto,

PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64:698-

708.

Context Understanding a speaker's communicative intent in everyday

interactions is likely to draw on cues such as facial expression and

tone of

voice. Prior research has shown that individuals with autism spectrum

disorders (ASD) show reduced activity in brain regions that respond

selectively to the face and voice. However, there is also evidence that

activity in key regions can be increased if task demands allow for explicit

processing of emotion.

Objectives To examine the neural circuitry underlying impairments in

interpreting communicative intentions in ASD using irony comprehension as a

test case, and to determine whether explicit instructions to attend to

facial expression and tone of voice will elicit more normative patterns of

brain activity.

Design, Setting, and Participants Eighteen boys with ASD (aged 7-17 years,

full-scale IQ >70) and 18 typically developing (TD) boys underwent

functional magnetic resonance imaging at the Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain

Mapping

Center, University of California, Los Angeles.

Main Outcome Measures Blood oxygenation level-dependent brain activity

during the presentation of short scenarios involving irony. Behavioral

performance (accuracy and response time) was also recorded.

Results Reduced activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and right superior

temporal gyrus was observed in children with ASD relative to TD children

during the perception of potentially ironic vs control scenarios.

Importantly, a significant group x condition interaction in the medial

prefrontal cortex showed that activity was modulated by explicit

instructions to attend to facial expression and tone of voice only in the

ASD group. Finally, medial prefrontal cortex activity was inversely related

to symptom severity in children with ASD such that children with greater

social impairment showed less activity in this region.

Conclusions Explicit instructions to attend to facial expression and tone

of voice can elicit increased activity in the medial prefrontal cortex,

part

of a network important for understanding the intentions of others, in

children with ASD. These findings suggest a strategy for future

intervention

research.

Author Affiliations: Departments of Psychology (Drs Wang and Sigman) and

Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences (Drs Sigman and Dapretto) and

Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping Center (Ms Lee and Dr Dapretto), University

of California, Los Angeles. Dr Wang is now with the Department of

Psychiatry, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY, and Ms Lee is now

at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Rochester,

Rochester,

NY.

RELATED ARTICLE

This Month in Archives of General Psychiatry

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2007;64:629.

FULL TEXT

" Ms. Michele "

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