SFARI Blog

Our amazing director, Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg has a new column with the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative (SFARI)! Here's an excerpt from her first piece entitled "Why we must be patient when searching for an autism biomarker" :

We have found differences in brain functioning in children with autism at an age that would be ideal for offering an early diagnosis. So why do we not want to pitch our findings as evidence of a new biomarker?

Autism is a behavioral syndrome that emerges sometime in the second or third year of a child’s life, but the search is now on for ‘biomarkers’ that could serve as a diagnostic test for autism at a much earlier point in time, providing the opportunity for intervention when the greatest impact may be possible.

You can read the whole column here.

Director Featured in the Bostonia

Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg was recently featured in an article in the Fall 2014 issue of the Bostonia. The piece by Rich Barlow discusses the direction of neuroscience research and has interviews with multiple Boston University researchers. You can read the whole article here.

Walk Now for Autism Speaks!

The CARE lab is excited to be attending Greater Boston Walk Now for Autism Speaks! This is an amazing event supporting Autism Speaks and raising awareness for autism spectrum disorder. We'd love to see you there!

This year the walk will be held on October 19th from 9:00am-1:00pm at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, MA.

The CARE lab has received funding for research from Autism Speaks in the past and this is a great way to show our appreciation and support. Donations raised by the walk go to help fund research and increase autism awareness. If you're interested in donating, the CARE Walk team would greatly appreciate it. Click here to donate!

Rep. Chaka Fattah Visits CARE

Last week CARE was honored to have Representative Chaka Fattah visit. The Pennsylvania Congressman went on a tour of the center, met our team, and discussed neuroscience research with our director, Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg, as well as other Boston University professors and administrators. Rep. Fattah is an advocate for neuroscience in Congress and played an instrumental role in launching the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative in 2013. Representative Fattah genuinely enjoyed learning about the special technologies we use to investigate the brain in our participants at  all ages and how we make our participants comfortable wearing the cap or lying in the scanner. To see more pictures from the Congressman’s visit please click here.

Autism Center First to Study Minimally Verbal Children-NIH

The past decade has been a time of great advances in research exploring the causes, diagnosis, and treatment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a complex developmental disorder that affects behavior, communication, social interaction, and learning… click here to read more

Reaching the Silent Ones

CARE's director Helen Tager-Flusberg talks about our research with children who are minimally verbal and have autism.

NEW!! Helen Tager-Flusberg awarded $10 million to establish Autism Center of Excellence!

The National Institutes of Health announced that they have awarded Dr. Helen Tager-Flusberg a grant of $10 million over five years, to establish an Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) at Boston University.  The five year grant will fund several research projects specifically designed to address the question of why some individuals do not acquire spoken language skills.  Little is known about these individuals because current assessment tools and practices are not adequate for this population. More significantly, there are no models that explain why about 30% of the ASD population remains minimally verbal and no interventions that specifically and uniquely target this population in promoting spoken language. The goals of the Autism Center of Excellence is to address these issues, bringing tools, methods, and approaches drawn from others areas of speech, auditory, clinical, and computational neurosciences. The ACE, which will be located at Boston University, brings together researchers from across the university and collaborators from Harvard Medical School, Northeastern University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. It is hoped that this research will fill important gaps in our knowledge of ASD, lead to changes in clinical practice and interventions, and provide important biological clues about the mechanisms that underlie spoken language and social communication. More

The Deaf Autism Research Project is being featured on the blog Autism Light!

Aaron Shield is the Principal Investigator for the Deaf Autism Project here at ROADD and this week we are excited to announce that his project is featured on the blog Autism Light!

LDCN becomes ROADD!!

After many years as the Lab of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, we have now changed our name to Research on Autism and Developmental Disorders, or ROADD for short!  This title certainly seems more relevant to the research we carry out here at the lab! We hope that you find the name more family friendly, and I'm sure you agree it is less of a mouthful!  Also, a big thank you to Meagan Thompson for coming up with this new title! We all look forward to your support for our research here at ROADD!!

Helen Tager-Flusberg, Newly Elected President of INSAR!

International Society for Autism Research

INSAR is the major professional, scientific organization devoted to advancing knowledge about autism spectrum disorders.
Our growing organization offers the following benefits to members:
1) Organization of the annual International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR). Members of INSAR do not pay for
submitting abstracts and receive a reduced registration fee
2) Free on-line access to our flagship journal: Autism Research
3) Access to members only sections of the INSAR website
4) Job postings on the website
5) Ability to vote in elections and participate in committee activities

This May I assumed the role as President of INSAR; Lonnie Zwaigenbaum is the new Vice President; Kevin Pelphrey the new treasurer and Nancy Minshew, Secretary. We are fortunate to be taking on the work of INSAR at a time when our prior Board (David Amaral, Simon Baron-Cohen, Laura Klinger and Deborah Fein and Bob Schultz) had achieved so much in placing our organization on a firm financial footing and planning a number of important new initiatives. We are sincerely grateful for all
their hard work these past two years, and are pleased that both David and Laura will continue as members of the board in the coming years. Our top priority in the coming months will be to revamp the website, under the leadership of Simon Baron- Cohen, Chair of the Website Committee and Christa Anderson, our new web editor. Look for the unveiling of the new website later this fall! We are also planning a number of additional initiatives over the coming months. IMFAR 2011 was a resounding success in San Diego! Our thanks go to Laura Schreibman (Conference Chair) and her committee and Dan Geschwind (Scientific Program Chair) and his committee.
Start planning now for IMFAR 2012: May 17th-19th in Toronto!
Sincerely,
Helen Tager-Flusberg
INSAR, President