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Disabilities RSS FeedsMicrosoft's Guardian Angel patent - a sign of next generation support - The bad news is that Microsoft's lawyers consider something as obvious and inevitable as "Guardian Angel" to be patentable. America's current software and process patent laws are insane. At a minimum persons evaluating patents need to be well grounded in science fiction.The good news is that this is something I have been hoping would emerge sooner rather than later. The value for special needs persons, including the majority of us who develop special needs in our 70s and 80s, could be enormous -- especially when combined with ubiquitous robotics.United States Patent Application: 0080082465 (Microsoft Guardian Angel)An intelligent personalized agent monitors, regulates, and advises a user in decision-making...Feed Source: bestyoucanbe.blogspot.com Thinking differently about different minds - Friends and families of special needs children and adults know that (soon to be obsolete) terms like "autism", Asperger's, and "mental retardation" cover an enormous spectrum of variation. That variation requires a customized management program to make each person "the best they can be", but we don't have the science or the people to begin designing and implementing new approaches. Maybe we can start by realizing that all minds are different What if we could see the diversity of minds? human brains are actively evolving now. To ... Autism turns into Asperger's - how did that happen? - "Sam" (pseudonym) isn't "autistic" any more. Now he has "Asperger's". He used to have "autism", so what happened? What was the key intervention? Was it abstention from immunization? No, he gets poked regularly. An alternative or experimental medication? No, he's never taken any medications (unlike his sib - we treasure medications when they're valuable). An intense program of behavioral therapy? No, he's mostly inherited the fringes of the home built behavioral program his older brother needs. Dietary changes then? Vitamins, supplements, abstention from gluten? Well, he only accepts a very limited diet, but it contains a reasonable amount of gluten, wheat, etc. He's finally accepted his sister's daily multivitamin, which might help avert scurvy. A quiet, calming, nurturing home environment? *Cough*. No. A brilliant set of ther... Working memory can be improved by training - In experimental subjects, which are usually undergraduates majoring in psychology, working memory can be improved (emphases mine) Memory Training Shown to Turn Up Brainpower - New York Times The key, researchers found, was carefully structured training in working memory ? the kind that allows memorization of a telephone number just long enough to dial it. This type of memory is closely related to fluid intelligence, according to background information in the article, and appears to rely on the same brain circuitry. So the researchers reasoned that improving it might lead to improvements in fluid intelligence.First they measured the ... Special needs children and family income - The only surprise here is that that family income decrease is only about a 14%, though the total cost was estimated at closer to 25% of income. (via FuturePundit: Autistic Kids Lower Parental Income, emphases mine): The costs of raising kids with developmental defects is very high New research suggests that the average household with children with autism not only spends thousands of dollars toward educational, behavioral and health care expenses each year, but also suffers from a lesser-known cost that hits them up front – a sizeable chunk of missed household income, perhaps as much as $6,200 annually . “That’s a staggering 14 percent loss,” Montes said. “We presume this may be strongly related to a lack of appropriate community-based support resour... The candidates and disability policy - Crooked Timber's Michael Berube has summarized the disability policies of the three contending candidates: Crooked Timber -- Disability and Democracy. McCain's policy is fairly simple Yes, well, McCain’s disability policy is much easier to summarize: (a): we need to cut costs; and, following from (a), (b): don’t become disabled Clinton does a very good job A Hillary Clinton Administration would be quite good on disability/ health and disability/ employment, and generally good for my kid – this one, not the college senior who turns 22 today but her web site does a poor job of displaying her di... Wanted: a class action lawsuit on academic skills testing for special needs children - I don't have time to sue the State of Minnesota, but I'd be glad to sign on to a class action suit. I don't want any money -- in fact I'll donate towards a lawsuit.I wouldn't mind the state's standardized testing program if my son was being tested on something he's studied. If he were being tested on third grade rather than fifth grade material I'd be pleased to participate. That's not how the unthinking robots who wrote the No Child Left Behind law chose to proceed however:"The Minnesota Test of Academic Skills (MTAS) is Minnesota?s alternate assessment based on alternate achievement standards. The MTAS is part of the statewide assessment program and measures the extent to which students with significant cognitive disabilities are making progress in the general curriculum. The MTAS in readin... Changing behavior in children: Kazdin for most and what we do now - I spent challenging years learning what Kazdin more or less gives away in a few paragraphs plugging his book (good Amazon ratings so far).Here's Kazdin's summary in Slate How to really change your kid's behavior. - By Alan E. Kazdin - Slate Magazine You begin by deciding what you want the child to do, the positive opposite of whatever behavior you want to stop. The best way to get rid of unwanted behavior is to train a desirable one to replace it. So turn "I want him to stop having tantrums" into "I want him to stay calm and not to raise his voice when I say no to him."Then you tell the child exactly what you would like him to do. Don't confuse improving his behavior with improving his moral understanding; just make cle... The effective cessation of Minnesota's waiver services program for persons with cognitive disabilities - Two months ago I wrote about Waivered services and the Personal Care Attendant program: . Which brings me back to the PCA (personal care attendant) topic. The AuSM has an excellent handout called Services for Children with ASD (scan PDF 103K) I'll summarize here and expand upon:TEFRA: medical assistance, but qualification based on disability TEFRA will help pay for PCA Services and Waivered services.PCA services (see esp MN PCA Choice Option) .Wai... A breakthrough in understanding the genetics of schizophrenia -- and perhaps of autism too - A major publication in Science on the genetics of schizophrenia is summarized in Gordon's Notes Gordon's Notes: What is schizophrenia? Not what we thought. note only 15% percent of "schizophrenics" fit this pattern. I'll summarize the key implications: Schizophrenia is not a disease. It's the name given a fairly large number of unique disorders of brain development that have, among their endpoints, social withdrawal, hallucinations, and fixed beliefs. A good number of cases of "autism" and "schizophrenia" are different manifestations of overlapping sets of mutations. There may be"no genes for most instances autism and schizophrenia". There are sets of large scale mutations that are similar between c... Wanted: A new profession of neurotherapy - I don't ask for much. So I won't ask for any miracle cures. I would, however, like to see a new profession. I'd call it cognitive therapy, but that name's taken. So I'll call it neurotherapy for now. A neurotherapist is a cross between a coach, teacher, occupational therapist, speech therapist, trainer, psychiatrist and neurologist. A neurotherapist studies a child or adult with cognitive disorders and creates a profile of abilities, talents, disabilities and traits. The neurotherapist then establishes up an empirical program of training, and studies the response across aspects of the individualized cognitive profile. Some aspects respond to training. These receive special attention. Others respond poorly, they may be approached through different modalities. Over time a repeated failure of one aspect to respond to training means time and energy shift to other aspects. A neurotherapist looks for collections of traits that may su... Guanfacine and lessons about off-label drug use - Guanfacine, marketed as Tenex, was once used to treat hypertension. These days it's also used, off-label, for the management of behavioral disorders in children. Very off-label. You won't find this mentioned in most drug references. You also won't find mention that guanfacine alters the course of neuronal development in mice, or that Guanfacine Improve Paired Associates Learning, but not Delayed Matching to Sample, in Humans: Neuropsychopharmacology (1999) 20 119-130.10.1038/sj.npp.1395238 The present study compares the effects of two alpha2-agonists, clonidine (0.5, 2, and 5 ... Google for Non-Profits - Google for Non-Profits doesn't have a lot of new things, but Google is putting them all in one place. Great stuff for special needs related organizations. The big three are:Free online advertising (Google grants)Google Apps for non-profits (a terrific infrastructure, see Minnesota Special Hockey).Checkout: Google processes credit card donations - for free!... Applying lessons from the rehabilitation of traumatic brain injury to the care of special needs children - I've been frustrated by the thunderous silence on how to manage a special need's child whose brain has areas of profound weakness. Subsequently it has occurred to me that there has been quite a bit of research on the topic of optimizing the function of injured brains -- but the work has been done in the context of trauma, not of congenital or developmental injury. Traumatic brain injury rehabilitation has always had much more funding than the rehabilitation of congenitally injured minds, but terrible rates of brain injury in modern warfare have greatly increased research funding for young adults as well. A quick PubMed search suggests there may be fruitful ideas in this domain: ... Interactive Autism Network Research: Johns Hopkins and the Kennedy Krieger Institute - I came across this one at a scientific meeting I was attending. The Kennedy Krieger Institute claims to be America's largest facility for the care and study of children with autism and other developmental disorders. Together with Autism Speaks they're sponsoring the IAN Project, a national project to study the natural history and characteristics of the the complex array of syndromes and disabilities now awkwardly lumped together as "autism": Interactive Autism Network Research IAN Research allows parents of children diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) to participate in research over the Internet. Parents provide information about their child's diagnosis, behavior, family, environment, and servi... Vaccine payment for a mitochondrial disorder? - It's a weird story. The feds paid out a vaccine injury claim for a child with a mitochondrial disorder.Deal in an Autism Case Fuels Debate on Vaccine - New York Times Hannah?s father, Dr. Jon Poling, was a neurology resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital at the time, and she underwent an intensive series of tests that found a disorder in her mitochondria, the energy factories of the cells Since the formal definition of autism doesn't exclude brain injury from other causes Hannah does technically have autism, but she'd be excluded from any research study of the disorder. She apparently has a well defined and extremely rare disorder of her mitochondria ... BigScreen Live: XP software for elders and special needs - In general, what works for elders also works for persons with cognitive disabilities. I speak here as someone who is closer to elder than younger. So I was intrigued to find this product in one of my routine searches for adaptive software solutions: BigScreen Live: Software and Accessories Create an account for yourself or for a relative or friend. After the 30-day trial a membership will be available to you for the price of only $14.99 per month. You do not need an email address to get a BigScreenLive membership. We will provide you will an email address, and free download of the software. Currently BigScreenLive works with Windows XP and Vista and will be available for Macs soon. Once you purchase a membership, we will also send you a BigScreenLive USB 2.0 Flash Drive, which will allow you to use BigScreenLive on public computers without having to download th... Medications for childhood behavioral disorders: What are the effects? - Guanfacine is an old medication for hypertension, marketed as Tenex. It's thought to act by stimulating alpha2-adrenergic receptors in the brain; in other words it's an alpha2-adrenoceptor agonist. It's not a great antihypertensive and it's not used much for blood pressure treatment any longer. It is used, off label, for the management of some behavioral disorders in children. What effect, I wondered, might it have on the developing brain? It wasn't hard to find this on Pubmed. Activation of alpha2A adrenoceptors alters dendrit [Brain Res. 2008] - PubMed Result Activation of alpha2A adrenoceptors alters dendritic spine development and the expression of sp... How do you manage a broken brain? We don't know. - How do you manage a broken brain? What do you do when some skills are at the 75th percentile, and others at the 2nd percentile? Much harder -- when some skills are at the 4th percentile, and others below the 1st percentile? Do you create a profile of all the strengths and weaknesses, a visual representation to analyze and evaluate? An MRI of the mind? Do we create programs to strengthen the weakest areas, or do we leverage the stronger domains? Or perhaps the middle range? Can two or three areas of strength be combined to help an area of weakness? What role might cognition-medications have? What role do psychostimulants have? How do we measure progress? How do we know when to change direction? How do we intervene in infancy, when surgeons can remove half the brain and a child can still go to college? In early childhood? In pre-adolescence? During the teen years? In adulthood? In old age? How do we leverage computerized,... Autism spectrum disorders on the phone: would a webcam or mirror help? - I wonder if this technique would be helpful for people with autism spectrum disorders. Would seeing their own facial expressions help with self-evaluation and self-assessment?Gordon is using a webcam, but a mirror would also work Gordon's Notes: using a webcam to help with audio-only conference calls I've recently been persuaded that for many people, including me, even crummy low resolution images enable better social interaction and higher quality communication.So I've started using a webcam with Office Communicator 2005. Unfortunately the people I communicate with don't usually have a webcam, so it's one way. They see me. I either see a blank space or my own face.That's where I made an interesting discovery. It helps me, when on a phone call, to see my own face. It helps me be more patient, and even to be a better listene... Autism Society of Minnesota: Recommendations, PCA infrormation - We've been taking "Sam" to the Eagle's Nest social skills program at the Autism Society of Minnesota. I think it's somewhat helpful for him [1], though it's designed more for children like Sam's brother "Nick". Nick is up next, though that will take a carefully coercive mixture of bribes and consequences.The real value for us though has been the parents session led by an expert counselor with serious personal experience with "the spectrum". The "AuSM" also has q1-2 week skillshop topics and an excellent member's only Lending Library (click to browse collection): "Library materials are available for loan to all current AuSM members. You may check out up to 6 items for 3 weeks at a time."... Berate, Guggenheim and ABC: three slimy entities - There's no good reason today to believe that autism spectrum disorders are related to immunization.Science in general, and clinical science in particular, is very imperfect. Even so, it's all we've got. There are no credible competitors to science for guiding health care and health related decisions.The answer from the best science we've got is that there's no connection. The strong beliefs of many people has meant that the topic has been very well studied -- probably to the detriment of more promising investigations. Today what was once a plausible hypothesis has become a waste of time and resources. We have better things to do now.Maybe that situation will change, but today that's what it is.So, like all scientists and most clinicians, I was very annoyed when I heard about a television show promoting an autism/immunization link. Still, that's what one gets... Garrison Keillor on education, ideology and learning to read - As of today I've written about 45 posts reading and cognitive disabilities. Since my wife and I are basically bleeding-heart liberals (for want of a better term), it's particularly sad that the liberal establishment has often been opposed to evidence-based education in reading. Even today, there's a strong remnant of 1960s era approaches to teaching reading in Minnesota's educational establishment. Today, a local celebrity and certified liberal, Garrison Keillor, writes on the topic as only he can: We're failing our kids | Salon.com And then there is the grief that old righteous people inflict on the young, such as our public schools. I'm looking at U.S. Department of Education statistics on reading achievement and see that here in Minnesota -- proud, progressive Minnesota -- on a 500-point test (av... Reading goes to the dogs - The Strib writes about reading to dogs in the Ramsey county library system:Libraries pair furry friends with phonics: "The Ramsey County library system introduced the Paws to Read program last summer, when therapy dog owners approached library administrators about volunteering. So far, the library system has hosted programs in Roseville, Shoreview, Maplewood and now Mounds View."Saint Paul's been running the same program for at least six months. We've been regulars at two libraries. I can't say that it makes a great difference for our children, but they do like it.... A mouse model for schizophrenia - This was announced in July of 2007, but I completely missed it. I only read of it in a recent 'top 10 science stories' article. Hopkins team develops first mouse model of schizophrenia Johns Hopkins researchers have genetically engineered the first mouse that models both the anatomical and behavioral defects of schizophrenia, a complex and debilitating brain disorder that affects over 2 million Americans. In contrast to current animal studies that rely on drugs that can only mimic the manifestations of schizophrenia, such as delusions, mood changes and paranoia, this new mouse is based on a genetic change relevant to the disease. Thus, this mouse should greatly help with understanding disease progression and developing new therapies. Animal models of schizophrenia have been hard to design since many different causes underlie this disease. However, ... Copyright © 2008, Curse Buster Sound. All Rights Reserved. |