Senses Lab

12/20/2023

"The app displays a series of brief, fun movies that have been strategically designed to elicit autism-related behaviors, such as gaze, orienting to a name call, and facial expressions. While the child watches the movies, the camera embedded in the smartphone or tablet records the child’s behavioral responses. A technique called “computer vision analysis” then automatically and precisely measures the child’s behavioral responses. The computer can measure whether the child noticed the social elements of the movie, such as people, or was mostly paying attention to the nonsocial elements, such as toys or other objects. It can measure the child’s facial expressions, blink rate, orienting to their name, and other body movements. The app then uses machine learning to integrate all these behavioral signals and determine how likely it is that the child is autistic. It’s all done in less than 10 minutes using only a smartphone or tablet."

Scientists are using AI to detect autism and reduce healthcare disparities.

04/12/2021

Mice missing a copy of chromosomal region 16p11.2 are slow to learn motor tasks and have dysfunction in a brain circuit associated with stress and movement, according to a new study. Normalizing this circuit's activity corrects the learning deficit.

04/08/2021

The Autism Science Foundation plans to hold its annual Day of Learning virtually on April 22nd at no cost:

ASF’s 8th annual flagship event, which features TED-style talks on key issues facing the autism community, has pivoted to a virtual format for the second time amid the pandemic. Tickets are free and accessible worldwide. NEW YORK — February 18, 2021 — The Autism Science Foundation (ASF), a not...

04/05/2021

Autistic children with sensory issues show more intense physiological reactions to unpleasant sounds and other sensations than their non-autistic peers do, a new study shows.

04/02/2021

Genes influence how autistic people react to sights, sounds and other sensory cues, whereas environmental factors shape their tendency to notice and seek out such stimuli, a new study in twins suggests.

10/09/2020

The repetitive behaviors seen in autism may originate in the striatum, a cluster of neurons involved with initiating and executing movements.

09/22/2020

This fits well within the concept of there being difficulties with signal to noise discrimination and filtering in ASD - difficulty parsing out the salient signal from less important "noise."

Minimally verbal autistic people do not differentiate the sound of their own name from that of a stranger, according to a new EEG study.

09/14/2020

People who do not identify with the s*x they were assigned at birth are three to six times as likely to be autistic as cisgender people are.

09/14/2020

A machine-learning algorithm was able to discriminate between photos taken by people with ASD and those taken by typically developing people:

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show atypical attention to social stimuli and aberrant gaze when viewing images of the physical world. However, it is unknown how they perceive the world f...

09/11/2020

Abstract Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are significantly more likely to experience sensory over‐responsivity (SOR) compared to neurotypical controls. SOR in autism has been shown t...

08/13/2020

A consideration for face mask requirements: hypersensitivities related to autism spectrum disorders

A Texas woman and her family were forced off a Houston-bound Southwest flight after her three-year-old son with autism would not wear a face mask.

08/11/2020

Free webinar on pain in autism:

On 29 July, Michelle Failla and David Moore gave a webinar on pain in autism, which focused on sensations, emotions and behaviors.