Myomancy ADHD, Dyslexia and Autism

All In The Mind is BBC Radio 4’s psychology programme and this week’s edition (27th December 2005) focused on Autism. The programme was upbeat about the prospects for autism research. Predicating that at least some of the genetic causes will be identified in the the next 18 months and that in under ten years there will be major advances in diagnosis and treatment. Prior’s Court Foundation, a school for severely autistic children was featured and the Boston Higashi School was also mentioned. There was also a short segment on the neuro-diverse debate.
One of the interesting things mentioned by the programme was the problems doing fMRI studies on autistic children. fMRI scanners are large, humming machines within which the patient has to lie still for several minutes. This can be very intimidating for autistic children so the researchers built a mock scanner that is used to get the children accustomed to lying in it.