antonia.sanjose

Dear Mt Blanc, I perfectly understand your point and see how some people may not agree to pharmaceutical interventions. However, and unfortunately, many families still would love to have a treatment which may help their son/daughter to communicate better or just to stop them from harming themselves. By no means we intend to offend anyone. In fact, our project has got an ethics advisory board composed by several members, amogst them, a person in the spectrum who advise us on all sort of issues. We recently hosted a public debate where people were invited to express their views and opinions. It had great attendance. We really take careful consideration on how families feel about treatment interventions and we're open to hear everyone's opinion. If you want to find out a bit more about this event, please check the storyfy created by Sandy Starr, one of our ethics advisory board, who is our ASD representative. I hope this email does not open a full threat on the debate of pharmaceutical intervention...This was intended for those of you who may know people who could be interested on participating in our project. We've been getting very positive feedback from those who have already participated in our study and it's a great experience for poeple who may be interested in science...or just in having a picture of their brain taken! Antonia

Hi all, Just checking whether someone around is happy to help us. I'm currently working in a research project in King's College London. We are 7 centers in Europe collecting data, which makes us the biggest research project in Autism in Europe. All our efforts are put into studying brain development in a large sample of people with autism from 6 to 30 years of age and different ability levels. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, but consolidate what previous research has found. Most of the research published is done with high-functioning individuals and rarely include our very neglected low-functioning children and adults. Therefore, brain abnormalities are often reported, but this is normally represented by adult or high functioning populations. At the moment, there is a lack of research focused on wide range of ages and abilities. This is why we are putting extra efforts on recruiting low-functioning people with autism. We want to check whether differences in brain development happen in individuals with different ability levels. Ultimately, we are looking into finding common biomarkers across age and cognitive ability. Finding common biomarkers may help our families in the future to seek pharmaceutical treatment if wished. Does any one of you know of people who would be willing to give us a couple of days of their time to come and visit us? Spefically, we are after: - high functioning ASD individuals between the ages of 6 and 18 - low functioning individuals with and without ASD between the ages of 12 and 30. However, because of the verbal demands of the project, they need to have basic expressive and comprehensive verbal skills (we have an adapted project for non-verbal people which I'm happy to explain if you would like me to). - Both males and females are welcome. The main part of the project involves a MRI scan. Because of that, we need participants capable enough to stay still in the scanner for at least 30mins, and they need to be ok with loud noises (the scanner is very loud). Other parts of the project involve EEG, Eye tracking and paper and pencil and computer tasks. We'll also ask their parents to complete some online questionnaires. We pay £100 for their time, and the posibility of winning £30 in one of the games during the MRI scan. They will also get a digital picture of their brain. We cover all travel expenses and provide with overnight accomodation if needed. But overall, I'd like to reassure that we give plenty of breaks and try to make their day as enjoyable as possible. We understand this can be tiring, and I personally have plenty of experinece working with low-functioning children. We always try to accomodate everyone needs as much as possible. If you want more information about the project, you can check on, but if you email me I'll provide you with more detailed information. Looking forward to hearing from you, Antonia