Sophie Molholm, Ph.D., discusses her new study of how children with autism spectrum disorders process sensory information such as sound, touch and vision. Dr. Molholm is associate professor in the Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience and of pediatrics.
A new study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University has provided concrete evidence that children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) process sensory information such as sound, touch and vision differently than typically developing children.
The study, which appears in the August 17 online issue of Autism Research, supports decades of clinical and anecdotal observations that individuals with ASD have difficulty coping with multiple sources of sensory information. The Einstein finding offers new insights into autism and could lead to objective measures for evaluating the effectiveness of autism therapies. [click to continue…]
Its happening all over, (even in my own home) young people moving back home. The New York Times What is it about 20-somethings? looks at the connundrum of why young people are taking longer to reach adulthood.
A cover of The New Yorker last spring picked up on the zeitgeist: a young man hangs up his new Ph.D. in his boyhood bedroom, the cardboard box at his feet signaling his plans to move back home now that he’s officially overqualified for a job. In the doorway stand his parents, their expressions a mix of resignation, worry, annoyance and perplexity: how exactly did this happen?
Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.link to read article
Parents don’t have as much impact on their kids as they think. Yet the amount of time parents, especially moms, spend with their kids has risen dramatically. This would make sense if kids were providing their parents with commensurate increases in joy, but the sad fact is that kids don’t make us happier. In fact, a study by sociologist Robin Simon from Wake Forest says that parents are, across the board, more depressed than non-parents.
Parents need to take a step back and reconsider their priorities. So-called helicopter moms are sacrificing friendships, communities, and even marriages to hyper-manage their children’s lives, says sociologist Margaret Nelson from Middlebury College. And while some studies say helicopter parenting can lead to neurotic kids, Nelson is worried less about the kids and more about the mothers’ sanity link to article
Psychological stress in middle age could lead to the development of dementia later in life, especially Alzheimer’s disease, reveals research from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Based on data from a study which followed women for 35 years, this is the first research in Sweden to indicate a link between stress and dementia.
The research, published in prestigious scientific journal Brain, is based on a major population study of women from Gothenburg. A representative sample of women were examined for the first time in 1968 when aged between 38 and 60, and then re-examined in 1974, 1980, 1992 and 2000.
A question about psychological stress was included in the 1968, 1974 and 1980 surveys and was answered by 1,415 women. [click to continue…]
Just 11 hours of learning a meditation technique induces positive structural changes in brain connectivity by boosting efficiency in a part of the brain that helps a person regulate behavior in accordance with their goals, researchers report. [click to continue…]
Growing up without siblings doesn’t seem to be a disadvantage for teenagers when it comes to social skills, new research suggests.
A study of more than 13,000 middle and high school students across the country found that “only children” were selected as friends by their schoolmates just as often as were peers who grew up with brothers and sisters.
“I don’t think anyone has to be concerned that if you don’t have siblings, you won’t learn the social skills you need to get along with other students in high school,” said Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, co-author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University’s Marion campus.
