This is the story of how my son has recovered from an autism spectrum disorder and how I am managing and working to recover from a neuro-immune disease called Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. I discuss the ups and downs of our lives as well as much of the information that led to my son's recovery and my own progress- autism and M.E. are both manifestations of the same underlying disease processes.
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Saturday, July 17, 2010
Seizures in Autism- How Common Are They?
In this TED talk, Aditi Shankardass,who leads a team at Harvard that uses EEG and other tools to assess the neurological basis of suspected brain disorders in children, discusses her findings that as many as 50% of children diagnosed with autism have seizure activity- usually previously undiagnosed. She makes the point that although 1 in 6 children is diagnosied with a brain disorder of some type, these diagnoses have nearly always been made entirely on the grounds of observable behavior rather than any actual biological or neurological test. Her finding that many of these children have seizures, and can improve substantially with appropriate treatment, underscores the meed to consider autism and related disorders not as "learning problems" or "mental problems" only but as actual, biologically based disorders that can be treated.