SFARI

An attempt at redefining autism
2014-03-26 17:00 - 18:15 UTC | Gerald D. Fischbach Auditorium, 160 5th Avenue, New York, NY, 10010, United States
On 26 March, Ami Klin presented data from two studies measuring social adaptive behaviors — highly conserved and early-emerging mechanisms of socialization — in infants and toddlers.His talk is part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series. You can watch a complete video recording of the event above.
About the lecture:
Advances in molecular genetics have implicated a number of genetic variants in autism, yet understanding of how these variants contribute to the disorder is limited. Autism is among the most reliably diagnosed neurodevelopmental disorders, but symptoms used to define autism are likely to be outcomes of disruptions much earlier in development. Klin’s findings might allow researchers to detect underlying characteristics associated with autism before the current average age of diagnosis.
About the speaker:
Ami Klin is Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Professor and director of the division of autism and developmental disabilities at Emory University School of Medicine. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of London and completed clinical and research work at Yale University’s Child Study Center. Until 2010, he directed the autism program at the Yale Child Study Center, and was Harris Professor of Child Psychology and Psychiatry there.
Klin’s primary research focuses on the social mind and brain and on the developmental aspects of autism from infancy through adulthood. He is the author of more than 180 publications in the field of autism and related conditions and the co-editor of Asperger Syndrome, Autism Spectrum Disorders in Infants and Toddlers, the third edition of the Handbook of Autism and Pervasive Developmental Disorders and several special issues of professional journals focused on autism.

Imaging early brain development in autism
2014-02-26 17:00 - 18:15
On 26 February, David Amaral presented evidence supporting the concept that there are different types of altered brain development among children with autism.His talk is part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series. You can watch a complete video recording of the event above.
About the lecture:
Autism clearly involves altered function of the central nervous system, but the neuropathology of the disorder remains controversial. This is due in part to the enormous complexity of the disorder, with many possible causes and biological trajectories. What’s more, few neuroimaging studies involve young children or severely affected individuals. This lack of information is compounded by the fact that findings from magnetic resonance imaging cannot be confirmed and extended to the cellular level because of a lack of postmortem brains.
About the speaker:
David Amaral joined the University of California, Davis, in 1995 as a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the Center for Neuroscience. He is a staff scientist in the Brain, Mind and Behavior Unit at the California National Primate Research Center. Amaral was named the Beneto Foundation Chair and research director of the MIND Institute in 1998. He received a joint Ph.D. in psychology and neurobiology from the University of Rochester.
Amaral’s research focuses on the neurobiology of social behavior and the development and neuroanatomical organization and plasticity of the primate and human amygdala and hippocampus. Increasingly, his research has been dedicated to understanding the biological basis of autism. As research director of the MIND Institute, Amaral coordinates a comprehensive and multidisciplinary analysis of children with autism, called the Autism Phenome Project, which aims to define biomedical characteristics of different types of autism.
Most recently, Amaral became director of Autism BrainNet, a collaborative effort sponsored by the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative and Autism Speaks. The new project aims to solicit postmortem brain tissue to facilitate autism research.

Infants' grasp of others' intentions
2013-11-06 17:00 - 18:15
On 6 November 2013, Amanda Woodward discussed the origins of children’s social understanding and how this fundamental aspect of cognition has profound implications for early childhood development. The talk is part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series.
Kevin Pelphrey provided post-lecture commentary on how our growing understanding of the origins of children’s social cognition can inform the search for early diagnostic indicators of autism.
You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
Growing evidence shows that in typical development, the ability to carry out actions according to intentions emerges during infancy. Studies over the past few years have shown that this ability develops and changes rapidly during infancy. An infant’s active engagement with the physical and social world is critical for acquiring social skills.
About the speaker:
Amanda Woodward is William S. Gray Professor of Psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the university’s Infant Learning and Development Laboratory.
Woodward is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the Association for Psychological Science. She is incoming president of the Cognitive Development Society and serves on the executive board of the International Society on Infant Studies. Woodward has pioneered the study of infant social cognition, particularly infants’ understanding of others’ actions and the relationship between infants’ own actions and their action perception. Her team also investigates infants’ learning from social partners, and cross-cultural variations in early social learning.
About the commentator:
Kevin Pelphrey is Harris Professor at the Yale Child Study Center and director of the Center for Translational Developmental Neuroscience and the Yale Center for Excellence in Autism Research and Treatment. As a SFARI Investigator, his research focuses on the application of cognitive neuroscience and genetics techniques to understanding the systems biology of neurodevelopmental disorders.

Evolving perspectives on autism
2013-09-26 17:00 - 18:15
On 26 September 2013, Catherine Lord and Steven Hyman presented conceptual frameworks for autism diagnosis and research, ranging from genetics to symptomatology, as part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series.
Eric London provided post-lecture commentary, placing the discussion in a clinical context and providing a physician’s perspective.
You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
Tremendous progress has been made in our understanding of autism, with major contributions coming from a variety of research fields, including genetics, neuroscience and psychology. The clinical definition of autism has been revamped with the publication of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Accordingly, our concept of autism is evolving, which in turn affects the future of autism research and the development of interventions.
About the speakers:
Catherine Lord is director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain, a joint project of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Weill Cornell Medical College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in partnership with New York Collaborates for Autism.
Lord is a licensed clinical psychologist with specialties in diagnosis, social and communication development, and intervention in autism. Renowned for her work in longitudinal studies of social and communicative development in autism, Lord has also contributed to the development of diagnostic instruments for autism that are now used as global research standards.
Steven Hyman is director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and is Distinguished Service Professor of stem cell and regenerative biology at Harvard.
From 1996 to 2001, Hyman served as director of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health, where he emphasized investment in neuroscience and emerging genetic technologies and initiated a series of large practical clinical trials to inform practice. He is editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience, president-elect of the Society for Neuroscience, founding president of the International Neuroethics Society and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academies.
About the commentators:
Gerald D. Fischbach is chief scientist and fellow of the Simons Foundation.
Eric London is director of the Autism Treatment Laboratory at the New York State Institute for Basic Research in Developmental Disabilities.

Antibodies, behavior and cognition
2013-05-30 17:00 - 18:15
On 30 May, Betty Diamond discussed how the immune system can mediate alterations in brain development and play a role in autism, as part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series.
Alan Brown provided a post-lecture commentary and context for Diamond’s work on epidemiological studies of autism and related disorders.
You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
As neutralizers of microbial agents, antibodies are major contributors to immune competence. Occasionally, however, they act as autoantibodies, which bind to a person’s own tissue, triggering autoimmune disease. In adults, the blood-brain barrier protects the brain against autoantibodies, but that barrier is not fully competent in fetuses, allowing maternal antibodies to penetrate the fetal brain and potentially alter its development. This mechanism may contribute to some cases of autism.
About the speaker:
Betty Diamond is head of the Center for Autoimmune and Musculoskeletal Diseases at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in New York. Her research has focused on the induction and pathogenicity of anti-DNA antibodies in systemic lupus erythematosus. She received the American College of Rheumatology’s Distinguished Investigator Award in 2001, the Lee C. Howley Sr. Prize from the Arthritis Foundation in 2002, and the Recognition Award from the National Association of M.D.-Ph.D. Programs in 2004. Diamond was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 2006.
About the commentator:
Alan S. Brown is professor of psychiatry and epidemiology at Columbia University and director of the Unit in Birth Cohort Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. His research has focused on prenatal exposure to infectious, immunologic, nutritional and toxic factors, and its association with risk of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and autism. He demonstrated earlier this year that elevated maternal C-reactive protein, an inflammatory biomarker, is related to a significantly increased risk of autism in the child. He is leading large, multi-site national birth cohort studies of prenatal biomarkers, developmental pathways and familial vulnerability based on an archived biobank and nationwide registries in Finland.

New genetic insights into autism
2013-04-25 17:00 - 18:15
On 25 April 2013, Matthew State reviewed the genetic discoveries made over the past several years in autism research and addressed challenges in the path forward — from reliable gene discovery to an actionable understanding of the disorder’s molecular underpinnings.The talk is part of SFARI’s Autism: Emerging Concepts lecture series. You can watch a complete video recording of the event above. Use the comments section below to discuss the lecture and pose follow-up questions.
About the lecture:
The genetics of autism has reached a tipping point. The recent focus on de novo mutations — or genetic variations not passed on from either parent — has led to systematic, highly productive gene discovery efforts. This work has begun to clarify a tremendously heterogeneous genetic architecture as well as to reveal specific genes contributing to social disability syndromes.
About the speaker:
Matthew State received his undergraduate and medical degrees from Stanford University and completed his residency in psychiatry and fellowship in child psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, Neuropsychiatric Institute. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Yale University and was a faculty member there from 2001 to 2013. He is currently chair of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.
State’s lab has a long-standing interest in the contribution of rare genetic mutations to childhood neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism and Tourette syndrome. He is currently leading a large, multisite, genome-wide study of autism funded by the Simons Foundation and is playing a leadership role in the Tourette International Collaborative for Genetics and the Autism Sequencing Consortium. Among many professional honors, he has been awarded the Ruane Prize for Outstanding Research in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry by the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation.
