John Elder Robison's Blog, page 20

Last Sunday I had dinner with the Jeffways. We always have a good time together, and sometimes bizarre and exciting things happen. Readers of Look Me in the Eye may recognize the name . . .Bob and I were engineers together, back at Milton Bradley. I met Bob, Celeste, and three of their five kids at Joes Pizza for a fine meal of pizza and spaghetti. Afterwards, we went in search of their daughter Alex at a local ice cream establishment.

We found her sitting with two girlfriends at the Flor...

Are you thinking of publishing a book? If so, you're probably wondering how to stack the odds in your favor, in terms of market success. And if you're not thinking that, you should be. Why? There are three hundred thousand new titles published every year in America. Of that, no more than a few hundred make the New York Times list.

But that's not the worst of it . . . most bestsellers are written by authors who wrote bestsellers before. In any given year, fewer than fifty debut authors ...

Back in the fall of 2008 I spoke at the MIT Brain Science Center in Boston. One of the people at that talk was Catherine Caldwell Harris, a psychology professor at BU. She asked an interesting question:
Why do you think Asperger people tend to be atheists?
First of all, I had no idea whether or not her premise was even true. Did Asperger people tend to be atheists? I turned the question back to her, and she told me about studies she'd done; exploring the religious views of a large number...

Many readers of this blog have written to ask the fate of Cubby's mom after her intestines exploded unexpectedly in March. As I've said in several updates she is alive and well and happily eating and then discharging wastes into a bag. She is due to have her repaired innards reconnected for test in less than two weeks.
Little Bear lives in South Hadley, about 15 miles from me. She was repaired at Northampton's Cooley Dickinson Hospital on March 29. We were both quite surprised at the...

As readers of this blog know, I spent the latter half of last week at the IMFAR autism science conference. For the first time, my son Cubby accompanied me. He helped my friend Alex Plank, founder of the Wrong Planet website, to interview a number of people.
In this video Peter Bell talks about his son and his views on finding ways to help people who are truly disabled by autism, and want help, while recognizing that some on the spectrum just wish to be left alone.
In the image below, Peter's ...

How does genetic research benefit people living with autism today? And why do scientists do autism research on mice? Those are two of the questions I discussed with researchers at this year's IMFAR autism science conference.

We'll start with genetics, an area of study that's often misunderstood . . .

The available evidence suggests that autism has both genetic and environmental components. When you study autistic minds at the cellular level, it's possible to find many subtle differences...

Wrong Planet founder Alex Plank and my son on the set where they are making video of conference participants, yesterday afternoon.
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I have observed a lot of scientists at this IMFAR event. Different as they seem on the surface (different sizes, shapes, colors, emission of sounds and smells . . .) they all have this in common: Everyone here wants to find ways to help fix autistic disability. That said, "Fix" means different things to different people, depending upon their special...

What happens to autistic kids when they grow up? Does a kid with substantial verbal impairment have a decent shot at growing up to have a family or a job? Does quality of life get better, worse, or stay the same? What kinds of support or services do middle aged people with autism need? What do they get? Are they happy?

Psychiatrist William McMahon of the University of Utah is embarking on an ambitious three-year study to get some of those answers. His pilot project should give parents re...

I wrote this in response to a parent's note, but on second thought, I thought perhaps I should share it more widely . . .

For many of us on the spectrum, a parent's stated quest to "cure" autism feels sort of like a divorced parent constantly criticizing her ex in front of us kids. As that kid, I know I am half Dad, and half Mom. So when Mom tells me Dad is no good, what is she saying about me? For those of you who think this is metaphor, let me assure you it's not.

If much of my life is def...

Autism Speaks has announced the funding of five million dollars in new research. In this and my next few blog posts, I'll describe the research and why it's important. The five million dollars is allocated over sixteen different grants. Two of them are described here.

I'd like to begin by quoting part of the Autism Speaks release:

Novel directions in early detection of autism

Two studies to be funded are focused on developing new methods for very early detection of ASD. The first will...