Caitlin Stier, video intern The shapes in this video seem to get distorted, but it's all in your mind. The illusion, created by Cornelia Fermüller of the University of Maryland, is an animated version of a classic effect called the Luckiesh pattern, where a shape can look skewed when surrounded by radiating lines. By making the linear pattern move, the distortion changes position. According to Fermüller, the bending is caused by imperfections in our visual system when we compute the angle between the pairs of lines. Our brain approximates the angle with a systematic error, for example an angle of 45 degrees may be over or underestimated by a degree. "Using this noisy measurement, the visual system computes wrong intersection points between the background lines and the shape, which leads to a perceived distortion," says Fermüller. Fermüller is using statistics to better understand the misinterpretation which also occurs in computer processing. The approach could explain illusions that involve basic estimation biases rather than higher level processing in the brain. You can also play around with an interactive version of the illusion here, by tweaking intersection estimates and controlling the speed and angle of the pattern. Journal reference: Vision Research, DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2003.09.038 © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15833 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Laura Sanders A meticulous study has failed to confirm a connection between chronic fatigue syndrome and a family of viruses that includes XMRV. Nine laboratories — including the two that originally identified a link — could not reliably detect the viruses in blood cells from patients with the mysterious and controversial condition, researchers report online September 22 in Science. In another blow, one of the labs that contributed to the original study retracted its key result because some of the samples used in the research were found to be contaminated with genetically engineered DNA from XMRV. The partial retraction also appears online September 22 in Science. Together, the new data largely exonerate the virus as a cause of chronic fatigue syndrome — a disorder with a constellation of symptoms, no known cause and no effective treatment. “The data certainly contradict the original findings,” says infectious disease specialist Michael Busch of the University of California, San Francisco and the Blood Systems Research Institute in San Francisco, who coordinated the new nine-lab study. “To me, it demonstrates that these labs have serious problems with false positive results and that those earlier data are not credible.” For some researchers, the end to the XMRV saga can’t come soon enough. “The whole scientific world pretty much knows this whole thing is hocus-pocus,” says Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Basically, it’s not real.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Depression
Link ID: 15832 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Laura Sanders Humans live in a world of uncertainty. A shadowy figure on the sidewalk ahead could be a friend or a mugger. By flooring your car’s accelerator, you might beat the train to the intersection, or maybe not. Last week’s leftover kung pao chicken could bring another night of gustatory delight or gut agony. People’s paltry senses can’t always capture what’s real. Luckily, though, the human brain is pretty good at playing the odds. Thanks to the brain’s intuitive grasp of probabilities, it can handle imperfect information with aplomb. “Instead of trying to come up with an answer to a question, the brain tries to come up with a probability that a particular answer is correct,” says Alexandre Pouget of the University of Rochester in New York and the University of Geneva in Switzerland. The range of possible outcomes then guides the body’s actions. A probability-based brain offers a huge advantage in an uncertain world. In mere seconds, the brain can solve (or at least offer a good guess for) a problem that would take a computer an eternity to figure out — such as whether to greet the approaching stranger with pepper spray or a hug. A growing number of studies are illuminating how this certitude-eschewing approach works, and how powerful it can be. Principles of probability, researchers are finding, may guide basic visual abilities, such as estimating the tilt of lines or finding targets hidden amid distractions. Other behaviors, and even simple math, may depend on similar number crunching, some scientists think. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 15831 - Posted: 09.24.2011

By Susan Milius Penguins may be able to smell some feathery, waddling whiff of kinship on others of their kind. In some sniff tests, Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) in the Brookfield Zoo outside Chicago could discriminate between the odor of birds they knew and birds they weren’t familiar with, says Jill Mateo of the University of Chicago. More intriguingly, the birds also showed evidence of an ability to distinguish between the scents of relatives and nonrelatives even if they weren’t personally familiar with the scent owners, Mateo and her colleagues report September 21 in PLoS ONE. The ability to recognize kin by smell has shown up in many other kinds of animals, including mammals, amphibians and fish. Although the new study is limited by its small size, it could be the first to show odor-based kinship recognition among birds. New evidence that a sense of smell may be important in birds also makes the study intriguing. For decades, scientists thought that most species of birds responded minimally, if at all, to odor cues. In recent years, though, researchers have uncovered more and more evidence for functionally significant sniffing, such as the odor detection of food out in the open ocean by blue petrels and some other tubenose seabirds. Odor-based kin recognition would make sense for colony-dwelling birds with lifetime monogamy such as the Humboldt penguins, which return to the same rookeries where they hatched in search of mating prospects. Birds hatched in different years by same parents could easily meet, Mateo says. “If familiarity is the only mechanism available to them, they might say, ‘Hey, I’m not related to you. Let’s have sex.” So a sniff test for kinship could come in handy. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15830 - Posted: 09.24.2011

by Elizabeth Pennisi Biologists have long wondered why some female animals bother to play the field. With males, spreading one's sperm as far and wide as possible makes sense, as they sire more offspring that way. For the female, however, extra sex takes a toll on her body, potentially reducing her life span. Yet it doesn't expand her chances of spreading her genes around. Researchers have now shown that promiscuity in the fairer sex has its benefits. By mating multiple times, females can compensate for the downsides of inbreeding. And that's why promiscuity may evolve in small populations. When populations of many organisms are small, their members often wind up mating with kin. Such inbreeding can lead to a double dose of bad genes that result in sickly offspring and reduced fertility. Matthew Gage, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, wanted to know if promiscuous females could offset problems from inbreeding by providing more possibilities for their eggs to be fertilized by genetically suitable sperm. He and his colleagues tested this idea in the red flour beetle, a 3-millimeter-long insect pest found in flour and grains and sometimes used in laboratory studies. Gage and colleagues found that multiple mating, also called polyandry, did benefit inbred females. When allowed to mate with just one male, inbred females have 50% fewer surviving offspring than outbred counterparts that mated with nonkin. But the number of offspring is equal if the inbred females breed with five males, the team reports today in Science. The inbred females are apparently able to weed out sperm from kin that would lead to less fit offspring. If they mate with just one male, however, they don't have that option. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15829 - Posted: 09.24.2011

Multiple sclerosis might be connected to a lack of steroids in the brain, Alberta researchers have found. MS attacks the brain and spinal cord, causing inflammation and damage that can lead to paralysis and sometimes blindness. In the September issue of the journal Brain, neurologist Dr. Chris Power of the University of Alberta Hospital in Edmonton and his colleagues describe a new potential avenue for treating MS. There are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials, Dr. Chris Power said.There are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials, Dr. Chris Power said. CBC The discovery centres on neurosteroids, which help brain cells to talk, grow and repair themselves. The findings open up a brain process "that we might be able to direct so that we can prevent damage and maybe even repair the damaged brain," Power said Wednesday. Brains of people who died with multiple sclerosis showed lower levels of neurosteroids, the researchers found. The team believes that by replacing neurosteroids, it might be possible to alleviate symptoms or even prompt recovery, based on the results of their test tube and mouse modeling studies. "We've actually jumped the queue a little bit because there are some drugs related to neurosteroids that are actively in clinical trials," Power said. "This certainly provides fertile ground." © CBC 2011

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15828 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By JAMES GORMAN A five-and-a-half-inch deep-sea squid that lives a solitary life up to half a mile down in the dark waters of the Pacific Ocean is the latest addition to the hundreds of species that are known to engage in same-sex sex. Over the years, scientists have added one creature after another to the list, making it clear that although nature may abhor a vacuum, it seems to be fine with just about everything else. Male squid, for example, pay no attention to the sex of other squid. Understandably so. They live alone in the dark, males and females are hard to tell apart, and only occasionally do squids pass in the night. Far better to risk wasting a few million sperm than to miss out on a chance to reproduce. This is only one among many sorts of same-sex sexual behavior. In some insect species, males engage in traumatic insemination, which is just what it sounds like, of other males and females alike. Among mammals, bottlenose dolphins and bonobos engage in lots of different kinds of sex. Male dolphins pursue sex with males and females equally, but the females show a preference for males. Bonobos pair off in all the combinations, often. Laysan albatrosses form long-term female/female pair bonds, but for them the point is raising chicks, not sex. If one female can arrange a quick liaison with a male from another pair, the two females will tend the young. Noah might well have had two female albatrosses on the ark. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15827 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Laura Sanders The high-pitched ringing, squealing, hissing, clicking, roaring, buzzing or whistling in the ears that can drive tinnitus sufferers crazy may be a by-product of the brain turning up the volume to cope with subtle hearing loss, a new study suggests. The results, published in the Sept. 21 Journal of Neuroscience, may help scientists understand how the condition arises. Tinnitus is clearly a disorder of the brain, not the ear, says study coauthor Roland Schaette of the University College London Ear Institute. One convincing piece of evidence: Past attempts to cure the condition by severing the auditory nerve in desperate patients left people completely deaf to the outside world — but didn’t silence the ringing. How the brain creates the maddeningly persistent phantom noise remains a mystery. Usually, tinnitus is tied to some degree of measurable hearing loss, but not always. “We’ve known for a long time that there are people who report tinnitus whose audiograms are normal,” says auditory neuroscientist Larry Roberts of McMaster University in Canada, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “It has been a puzzle to figure out these exceptions to the rule.” Schaette and coauthor David McAlpine, also of the UCL Ear Institute, suggest that these exceptions may actually be due to “hidden hearing loss” that shirks detection in standard hearing tests. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15826 - Posted: 09.22.2011

Heidi Ledford A widely touted — but controversial — molecular fountain of youth has come under fire yet again, with the publication of new data challenging the link between proteins called sirtuins and longer lifespan. In a paper published today in Nature1, researchers report that overexpressing a sirtuin gene in two model organisms — the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster — does not boost longevity as had been previously reported. Instead, the authors argue that the longer lifespan originally seen was the result of unrelated mutations lurking in the background of the experimental strains. Some see the results as clearing the air, and freeing the field to focus on other effects of sirtuins, such as regulating metabolism and responding to environmental stress. "The field has been overfocused on overhyped claims of longevity," says Johan Auwerx, a researcher at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, who has worked with the proteins but was not involved with the new study. "I don't think that's the main function of the sirtuins." “It's like discovering a landmine. If you walk by, a lot of other people will get blown up.” But Leonard Guarente, a sirtuin researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who published the original C. elegans work in 20012, argues that the longevity link is real and that the new paper is just "a bump in the road". "Our data are rock solid," he says. "I stand by them, and they have been replicated in other labs." © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 15825 - Posted: 09.22.2011

by Greg Miller Two groups of scientists working independently of each other have discovered a gene mutation that causes amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. Both teams found that mutations to the same gene can also cause a common type of dementia called frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The findings add to growing evidence that these two devastating disorders have more in common than meets the eye. ALS robs patients of the ability to control their bodies. The first symptoms can be subtle—a twitch, some muscle stiffness, or occasionally slurred speech—but then paralysis spreads across the body. Most patients die of respiratory failure within 5 years. FTD is a very different beast. The most common type of dementia after Alzheimer's disease, it triggers strange and inappropriate behavior, especially in social situations, as well as difficulty with decision-making, language, and other cognitive functions. Despite these differences, there are signs of overlap. Clinicians have noticed that people with one disorder sometimes have symptoms of the other, and some families seem to have more than their share of both. In 2006, researchers linked a region of chromosome 9 to both ALS and FTD. The findings suggested that a mutated gene in this region was responsible for many cases of both conditions, but scientists did not pinpoint a specific gene. The ensuing race to find the gene was "very intense," says Rosa Rademakers, a neurogeneticist at the Mayo Clinic Florida in Jacksonville, who led one of several teams that joined the pursuit. "Within the ALS and FTD fields, this was a result that everyone was waiting for." © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Alzheimers; ALS-Lou Gehrig's Disease
Link ID: 15824 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Deborah Kotz, Globe Staff Today is World Alzheimer’s Day, and a press release marking the occasion announced that one in eight 65-year-olds already has the disease, which causes profound memory loss over time, has no effective treatment, and is ultimately fatal. The release, from the nonprofit research advocacy group US Against Alzheimer’s , flashed a set of eight photos of famous 65-year-olds -- Diane Keaton, Stephen Spielberg, Cher, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Dolly Parton, Reggie Jackson, and Danny Glover-- and said statistically speaking, one of them has the devastating illness. Okay, none of them does (we hope), but it definitely grabs the attention. And we shouldn’t forget those younger than 65 -- like 59-year-old basketball coach Pat Summitt -- who have already been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, nor the millions of Americans in their 70s, 80s, or beyond. While advancing age, family history, and genes play a major role in determining Alzheimer’s risk, there are steps you can take to lower your chances of developing the disease. The following measures all help reduce inflammation in the body and maintain healthy blood flow in the arteries, both vital for healthy brain aging. -- Take steps to avoid diabetes. A Japanese study published this week in the journal Neurology found that 27 percent of those over age 60 who were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes developed dementia within 15 years, compared with 20 percent of those with normal blood sugar levels. Those with higher than normal blood sugar levels, or prediabetes, also had a higher risk. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 15823 - Posted: 09.22.2011

By Leila Battison Science reporter Electrically stimulating the brain can help to speed up the process of learning, scientists have shown. Applying a small current to specific parts of the brain can increase its activity, making learning easier. Researchers from the University of Oxford have studied the changing structure of the brain in stroke patients and in healthy adults. Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg presented their findings at the British Science Festival in Bradford. The team at Oxford has been conducting research into how the structure of the brain changes in adulthood, and in particular what changes occur after a stroke. They have used an approach called functional MRI to monitor activity in the brain as stroke patients re-learn motor skills that were lost as a result of their illness. One of the major findings is that the brain is very flexible and can restructure itself, growing new connections and reassigning tasks to different areas, when damage occurs or a specific task is practised. As part of this research, they investigated the possibility of using non-invasive electric brain stimulation to improve the recovery of these motor skills; the short-term improvement in stroke patients had already been noted. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15822 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Catherine de Lange I TRY to forget about potential onlookers as I crawl around a central London park, blindfolded and on all fours. With a bit of luck, the casual passer-by might not notice the blindfold and think I'm just looking for a contact lens. In fact, I'm putting my sense of smell to the test, and attempting to emulate the sensory skills of a sniffer dog. Just as a beagle can swiftly hunt down a pheasant using only its nasal organ, I am using mine to follow a 10-metre trail of cinnamon oil. Such a challenge might sound doomed to failure. After all, dog noses are renowned for their sensitivity to smells, while human noses are poor by comparison. Yet that might be a misconception. According to a spate of recent studies, our noses are in fact exquisitely sensitive instruments that guide our everyday life to a surprising extent. Subtle smells can change your mood, behaviour and the choices you make, often without you even realising it. Our own scents, meanwhile, flag up emotional states such as fear or sadness to those around us. The big mystery is why we aren't aware of our nasal activity for more of the time. Noses have certainly never been at the forefront of sensory research, and were pushed aside until recently in favour of the seemingly more vital senses of vision and hearing. "There has been a lot of prejudice that people are not that influenced by olfactory stimuli, especially compared to other mammals," says Lilianne Mujica-Parodi, who studies the neurobiology of human stress at Stony Brook University in New York. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste); Emotions
Link ID: 15821 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Lisa Grossman The key to pleasant music may be that it pleases our neurons. A new model suggests that harmonious musical intervals trigger a rhythmically consistent firing pattern in certain auditory neurons, and that sweet sounds carry more information than harsh ones. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, we have known that two tones whose frequencies were related by a simple ratio like 2:1 (an octave) or 3:2 (a perfect fifth) produce the most pleasing, or consonant, musical intervals. This effect doesn't depend on musical training – infants and even monkeys can hear the difference. But it was unclear whether consonant chords are easier on the ears because of the way the sound waves combine in the air, or the way our brains convert them to electrical impulses. A new mathematical model presents a strong case for the brain. "We have found that the reason for this difference is somewhere at the level of neurons," says Yuriy Ushakov at the N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhniy Novgorod in Russia. Ushakov and colleagues considered a simple mathematical model of the way sound travels from the ear to the brain. In their model, two sensory neurons react to different tones. Each sends an electrical signal to a third neuron, called an interneuron, which sends a final signal to the brain. The model's interneuron fires when it receives input from either or both sensory neurons. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hearing; Emotions
Link ID: 15820 - Posted: 09.20.2011

by Marianne English Though research has shown that women are more likely than men to remember the emotional details of an event, there may be another dividing factor when it comes to memory: birth control. Scientists know people's hormones shape how their memories form. For instance, our fight-or-flight hormones influence how the brain encodes a specific memory, with traumatic events making more of an impact than everyday activities. A portion of the brain called the amygdala works on the receiving end of these hormones and is thought to play a central role in making and storing new memories. Birth control works by reducing the amount of estrogen and progesterone in a woman's body to limit ovulation, but it's unclear whether these hormones affect how a person recalls an event. In one study, researchers looked at whether women taking oral contraceptives remembered events from an experiment differently than women with normal menstrual cycles not on birth control. Seventy-two female subjects were recruited for the study, half on the pill and half not. Each group watched variations of a slide show story that involved a young boy being hit by a car. Before and throughout the slide show, researchers collected saliva samples to measure alpha-amylase -- a chemical that signifies a drop or rise in the fight-or-flight hormone norepinephrine, which increases a person's heart rate during emergencies or stressful situations. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15819 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By Janet Raloff In obese people, even when the brain knows the body isn’t hungry, it responds to food as if it were, new brain-scan data show. That means that when obese people try to shed weight, they may find themselves on the losing side of a battle with neural centers that unconsciously encourage them to eat. For instance, in normal-weight people a neural reward system that reinforces positive feelings associated with food turns off when levels of the blood sugar glucose return to normal after a meal — a signal that the body’s need for calories has been sated. But in obese people, that reward center in the central brain turns on at the sight of high-calorie food even when their blood sugar levels are normal. The new findings show that “the regulatory role of glucose was missing in the obese,” says Elissa Epel of the University of California, San Francisco, an obesity researcher not involved with the new study. She says the data might “explain the drive to eat that some obese people feel despite how much they’ve eaten.” For the study, nine lean and five obese adult volunteers viewed pictures of foods such as ice cream, french fries, cauliflower or a salad while undergoing brain scans. Throughout the procedure, researchers asked the recruits to rate their hunger and how much they wanted a particular item. Volunteers arrived for their brain scans several hours after eating, and the researchers used insulin pumps to establish volunteers’ blood sugar levels at either normal background values (roughly 90 milligrams per deciliter), or at the “mild” end of low (around 70 milligrams per deciliter). That low value can occur briefly in some people during the day, especially in people with diabetes or metabolic conditions that precede diabetes, notes endocrinologist Robert Sherwin of Yale University, coauthor of the new study. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 15818 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN “Can I draw something for you — what should I draw?” Lonni Sue Johnson asked, but she didn’t wait for an answer. She drew a squiggly line that became a curly halo of hair around the cheerful face of a seated man stretching one leg upward, balancing a large bird on his foot. Within minutes, she had added a cat wearing a necklace, stars and a tiny, grinning airplane. “I like this part, because you want people to be happy,” she said, beaming. “Every sheet of paper is a treat.” Ms. Johnson, 61, is an artist and illustrator whose playful, bright-hued and often complex work has appeared in a wide array of publications, from the cover of The New Yorker to children’s books to murder mysteries to The New York Times — even a physics textbook. All that changed in December 2007, when she was stricken with viral encephalitis, a life-threatening disease that did severe damage to parts of her brain — including the hippocampus, where new memories are formed. She survived, but remembered little about her life before the illness. Yet she is still able to make art, though it is simpler and more childlike than her professional work. Her case is rare, experts say, because few accomplished artists continue to create after sustaining severe brain damage. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15817 - Posted: 09.20.2011

By ERIK OLSEN OFF THE BAHAMAS — In a remote patch of turquoise sea, Denise L. Herzing splashes into the water with a pod of 15 Atlantic spotted dolphins. For the next 45 minutes, she engages the curious creatures in a game of keep-away, using a piece of Sargassum seaweed like a dog’s chew toy. Dr. Herzing is no tourist cavorting with marine mammals. As the world’s leading authority on the species, she has been studying the dolphins for 25 years as part of the Wild Dolphin Project, the longest-running underwater study of its kind. “I’m kind of an old-school naturalist,” she said. “I really believe in immersing yourself in the environment of the animal.” Immerse herself she has. Based in Jupiter, Fla., she has tracked three generations of dolphins in this area. She knows every animal by name, along with individual personalities and life histories. She has captured much of their lives on video, which she is using to build a growing database. And next year Dr. Herzing plans to begin a new phase of her research, something she says has been a lifetime goal: real-time two-way communication, in which dolphins take the initiative to interact with humans. Up to now, dolphins have shown themselves to be adept at responding to human prompts, with food as a reward for performing a task. “It’s rare that we ask dolphins to seek something from us,” Dr. Herzing said. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Animal Communication; Evolution
Link ID: 15816 - Posted: 09.20.2011

People with schizophrenia are six times more likely to develop epilepsy, says a study which finds a strong relationship between the two diseases. Writing in Epilepsia, researchers in Taiwan say this could be due to genetic, neurobiological or environmental factors. The study followed around 16,000 patients with epilepsy and schizophrenia between 1999 and 2008. An epilepsy expert says it is an interesting and convincing study. The study used data from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database and was led by researchers from the China Medical University Hospital in Taichung. They identified 5,195 patients with schizophrenia and 11,527 patients with epilepsy who were diagnosed during the nine years period. These groups of patients were compared to groups of the same sex and age who did not have either epilepsy or schizophrenia. The findings show that the incidence of epilepsy was 6.99 per 1,000 person-years in the schizophrenia patient group compared to 1.19 in the non-schizophrenia group. The incidence of schizophrenia was 3.53 per 1,000 person-years for patients with epilepsy compared to 0.46 in the non-epilepsy group. Previous studies had suggested a prevalence of psychosis among epilepsy patients. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Schizophrenia; Epilepsy
Link ID: 15815 - Posted: 09.19.2011

By AMY HARMON MONTCLAIR, N.J. — For weeks, Justin Canha, a high school student with autism, a love of cartoons and a gift for drawing, had rehearsed for the job interview at a local animation studio. As planned, he arrived that morning with a portfolio of his comic strips and charcoal sketches, some of which were sold through a Chelsea gallery. Kate Stanton-Paule, the teacher who had set up the meeting, accompanied him. But his first words upon entering the office were, like most things involving Justin, not in the script. “Hello, everybody,” he announced, loud enough to be heard behind the company president’s door. “This is going to be my new job, and you are going to be my new friends.” As the employees exchanged nervous glances that morning in January 2010, Ms. Stanton-Paule, the coordinator of a new kind of “transition to adulthood” program for special education students at Montclair High School, wondered if they were all in over their heads. Justin, who barely spoke until he was 10, falls roughly in the middle of the spectrum of social impairments that characterize autism, which affects nearly one in 100 American children. He talks to himself in public, has had occasional angry outbursts, avoids eye contact and rarely deviates from his favorite subject, animation. His unabashed expression of emotion and quirky sense of humor endear him to teachers, therapists and relatives. Yet at 20, he had never made a true friend. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15814 - Posted: 09.19.2011