Workshop Calls for Greater Research Focus on Environmental Causes of Autism

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) last Friday released a report from the April 18-19 workshop Autism and the Environment, demonstrating a marked shift in the research agenda from heritability factors to toxic environmental exposures in the development of autism.

The National Autism Association (NAA) and SafeMinds have long called for a paradigm shift from children with autism are genetically defective to children with autism are sick and their illness is treatable. The groups hope that the recognition of environmental factors (including vaccines and heavy metals) in autism will lead to effective treatments for those with autism and prevention for susceptible infants.

In response to a request from the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, the two-day workshop included the nation's leaders in autism research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). Autism community advocates from SafeMinds, NAA and Autism Speaks were also invited participants of the workshop, plus scientists from Harvard, the MIND Institute, Columbia University, and more. The experts discussed strategies for developing a broad research agenda focusing on autism and environmental exposures.

Presentations emphasized the urgency to combat the growing national health crisis of autism and focused on the mechanisms by which environmental factors (including vaccines, chemicals, infectious agents, or physiological or psychological stress) can affect children's neurodevelopment. In addition, discussions addressed the infrastructure needs of identified research opportunities -- tools, technologies, and partnerships.

In his introductory remarks, William Raub, science advisor to HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt, expressed his hopes that the workshop would "prove to be an important milestone in autism research." He states: "The planning committee recognized that vaccine constituents, especially organic chemicals used as preservatives or adjuvants, obviously qualify as environmental agents that warrant attention. . . . . Other aspects of the autism challenge deserve similar attention, especially the paucity of effective treatments."

Autism experts identified a broad range of research priorities, including: biomarkers for diagnosis and treatment of differing subtypes of autism; rigorous analysis of effective treatments; a comparison of the health outcomes of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children, immune system and anti-viral therapies, and the need for more effective chelators.

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The Formation of Social Memories

Is there a specific memory for events involving people? Researchers in the Vulnerability, Adaptation and Psychopathology Laboratory (CNRS/University Paris VI France) and a Canadian team at Douglas Hospital, McGill University (Montreal), have identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex as being the key structure for memorizing social information.

Social events such as a party with friends, a work meeting or an argument with a partner form an integral part of daily life. Our ability to remember these events, and more precisely to remember the people and the relationships we had with them, is essential to ensure satisfactory adaptation to our social existence. At a cerebral level, various regions of the brain, and particularly the hippocampus, are directly involved in learning and memory. Some of these regions are specialised in learning certain types of information, such as the amygdale and our memory for emotions.

The Canadian and French teams (the latter led by Philippe Fossati) have recently identified a precise region in the frontal cortex which may be specialised in recording and learning social information. Using a functional magnetic resonance imaging technique, the scientists measured cerebral activity in 17 volunteers while they accomplished a memory task involving pictures of social scenes (interacting individuals) and non-social scenes (landscapes with no people). They thus identified the internal part of the prefrontal cortex, called the medial prefrontal cortex, as being the key structure in memorizing social information from a picture.

Previous studies performed by the same research teams had associated this prefrontal region with thinking processes about self and others. Their work suggested that in addition to emotions, the analysis of specifically human information could facilitate learning and
memorisation, involving cerebral structures specialised in analysing mental states and empathy.
This work opens important perspectives regarding our understanding of the mechanisms of human recollections and mental disorders (schizophrenia, autism) which affect social and relational skills.


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