Monday, June 04, 2007

The Neurobiology of Autism - conference notes



These are some verbal notes from a recent meeting I attended. There are some pictures, but it's mostly an audio thing. One thing I forgot to note was that in the Mirror Neuron presentation, an experiment was discussed that focused on sarcasm and the ability of an ASD child to "get it". "A balloon, oh great." Said by 2 different people means two entirely different things depending upon the tone. One person is excited about the balloon and the other is expressing disappointment following the balloon having popped. The ASD kid doesn't pick up on the meaning unless s/he's told to pay attention to the tone prior to hearing the phrase. Only then does the ASD kid "get it" and the appropriate spots light up on the MRI.

Running time - a 22 minute beast that I failed to get under 10 minutes for youtube consumption.

For Quicktime version, click here(pops)

It's pretty rough, but Bonferroni and Venn have been taking up much of my non-sleeping time lately. Enjoy.