IMFAR: day one lecture notes transcribed (1/5)

These are just SOME of my notes as I am transcribing them. I am posting them straight without commentary for two reasons:  maybe someone can connect their own dots and I will not have to type everything twice. This is just a block from the first quarter of day one at IMFAR! I will process and comment with some additional information I gather after I figure out what the heck I wrote in the first place. Enjoy this appetiser.


DAY ONE

IMFAR conference purpose: identify questions, methodology, and collaboration




Geri Dawson (Chapel Hill) Autism Speaks


• Improve lives: detect, translate, treatment, disseminate


• PREVENTION? “INVESTMENT”?


• $170million in research support


• Top –bottom research


• Discover risk factors


• Method detection


• Quality of life for adults


• Drugs (for profit and non-profit)


• Novel treatments


• Dissemination to community esp. “underserved”


• AGRE genome project


• Use of rat models


• Outcome measures


• Toddler Treatment Network (17 medical centers serving 22,000)


• 34 countries


• DSM V funding two studies effects on prevalence and diagnostics






Alan Parker Simons Foundation SFARI


• Many areas: math, computers, physical science


• Check website for news stories


• Simons Simplex Collection


• De Novo gene disruption: 7q11.23


• Simons VIP


• Making bio-collections available to others


• List of over 200 implicated genes


• Identifies variant sequences


• Protein interactions


• Strength of research on risk factors


• ??animal models??


• sfari.org




Keynote Speaker: Ruth Feldman (Yale, Israel)
Bio-behavioral Synchrony and the Development of Social Reciprocity- Implications of Clinical Practice OXYTOCIN


• OXTR oxytocin receptor gene


• Martin Cooper “Face Menu”


• Bonding is selective and enduring for survival of species


• Types: peer, parietal, filial


• Rules of social exchange are learned


• Capacity for empathy


• Studies are emerging and intensifying BEHAVIORAL


• Synchrony- collaborate and build societies like ants, schools of fish, and sharks


• 4-channel


• Behavior to biology


• Mother/parent provide bio-cues and social cues building bonds to eventual social bonds (w/in time limit early pregnancy to 1st year of life)


• Post-partum behavior essential


• Mother’s body is a bio-regulator/ function to regulate


• Grooming- relaying heavily on tactile contact translates to “social” touch


• Gaze, motherease, affect, affectionate touch, social contingency program newborns


• Infant scanning used to detect


• Mothers provide stimulation


• Looking for phenotypes- gaze synchrony, parental touch


• At 3mo active with face to face “dance-like”


• 3-9mo CRITICAL to maintain gaze and tolerance, synchrony remains (affect and rhythm)


• Basic quality of interaction set in first few months


• fathers stimulate with novelty


• Mother framed w/ gaze


• OXYTOCIN in hypothalamus: social interaction, theory of mind, stress reduction (interacts with dopamine)


• Works in loop: more oxytocin = more touch = more oxytocin etc.


• Doesn’t readily cross blood/brain


• PNS CNS


• Early studies using plasma samples not brain


• Amounts varied but stable within individuals


• Tells about “openness”


• NO difference in levels of men and women (parents)


• Increased during bond formation of pregnancy and immediately after birth


• Also seen in the first 3mo of “falling in love”


• Not significant after 3yrs (in parent interactions)


• Types: parental, best friend, romantic


• CNS PNS coordinate (effect one and or both)


• Use oxytocin nasally in studies


• ASD related to oxytocin function (reciprocity and pathways CNS PNS)


• CD38/OXTR/rs3796863/rs2254298/rs1042778 (co-morbidity w/ depression)


• ASD levels markedly lower


• When parents low, children low


• Does it effect girls consistently?


• What happens when genetic risk is identified???


• Birth – 5yrs


• Double blind research- administered to parents not children b/c of parallel effect of oxytocin (high risk infants), co-evaluation of mother and father care


• Longer gaze


• Synchrony uses mirror neuron NOT rt. amygdala, longer duration, more organized activation


• intrusiveness and gaze aversion uses amygdala not mirror neurons “choppy”


• coherent vs. disorganized anxiety


• temporal, parietal


• studies in post-partum depression