SUMMARY: When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife found out their son had autism, they were crushed by the fear that they couldn’t communicate. But they began to realize that he was learning to tell stories through Disney movies. The realization made Suskind ask, who decides what makes life truly meaningful? Suskind offers his Brief but Spectacular take on finding everyone's story.
SUMMARY: Before Josh, 36, arrived at First Place Transition Academy, he had never taken public transportation on his own, much less held down a paying job. But a new pilot program is empowering adults with autism to overcome hurdles to independence. Special correspondent John Donvan, co-author with Caren Zucker of “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism,” reports from Phoenix.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Tonight, we begin an occasional series about people living with autism and other spectrum disorders, A Place in the World.
While reporting the history of autism for their book, “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism,” co-authors John Donvan and Caren Zucker found a program in Phoenix, Arizona, that expands options for people living with autism.
This is the first of two reports.
JOHN DONVAN, Co-Author, “In a Different Key: The Story of Autism”: Why is it a big deal that Josh Kluger gets up every morning and makes his own breakfast and straightens up the place a little, and then remembers, belatedly to go back and grab his lunch before he heads off to work, which takes a quarter-mile hike, texting all the way, before he reaches the bus stop, and then a 45-minute trip with one transfer along the way?
And when I comes on board and Josh shows me how to swipe my ticket, why is that a big deal? Because, until last year, Josh had experienced none of this. No apartment. No paying job. No bus pass even. Actually, he'd never ridden a bus on his own before last year.
How old are you now?
JOSH KLUGER, Student, First Place: I'm 36.
JOHN DONVAN: You only really began being able to ride the bus when you were already over 30?
JOSH KLUGER: I think so, yes.
JOHN DONVAN: What did you have to learn?
JOSH KLUGER: I know learned how — streets.
JOHN DONVAN: And though Josh is not the chattiest person around, except perhaps when he's texting, you can tell from his stride and from his air of confidence about where he's heading that Josh really likes the life he has right now.
SUMMARY: Matt Resnik has helped changed the face of autism in his hometown. When he was diagnosed as a child, his parents poured their hearts into getting him therapy, even launching an organization, in hopes he would outgrow his challenges and find his place as an independent adult in the world. Instead, they’ve helped shape the world around him. Special correspondent John Donvan reports.
SUMMARY: A medical procedure used to diagnose damage from brain injuries may also help some autistic patients make connections and understand emotions they’ve never experienced. Author John Robison underwent that experimental therapy, detailed in a new memoir, “Switched On.” Hari Sreenivasan talks with Robison about his experience.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): In the latest NewsHour Bookshelf conversation, a look into a potential new treatment for autism.
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, can be used to diagnose damage from brain injuries and disorders. But a new study investigates whether the therapy can help some autistic patients make connections and understand emotions they have never experienced.
I recently spoke with one such patient.
John Robison, thanks so much for joining us.
So, first, let’s start with, what is transcranial magnetic stimulation, and why did you decide to participate in this research?
JOHN ELDER ROBISON, Author, “Switched On”: It’s a therapy where they use focused bursts of electromagnetic energy to transmit tiny amounts of electricity through the scalp and through the skull, and into your brain.
Your brain’s an electrical organ, so if you want to change how it functions, you can change it most directly with targeted electricity. When I heard that there was a study that might help autistic people like me see emotional cues in other people, the idea of it just spoke to the heart of something that I felt had been a disability in me all my life, being unable to read body language and expressions and cues in other people.
HARI SREENIVASAN: So, you describe this. I want to quote a paragraph.
It says: “Imagine that, all your life, you have seen the world in black and white. Meanwhile, everyone around you describes the beauty and richness of color. After a while, their talk of color frustrates you. Which do you believe, their words or the evidence before your eyes?”
So did you get a glimpse of color?
JOHN ELDER ROBISON: Absolutely.
That’s really the transformative thing about this. You can be an intelligent adult, and all your life, you hear about color, and yet eventually you start getting angry because the evidence in your eyes is gray.
And then imagine the doctor does something and they turn on color for half-an-hour. And even if color goes away, for the rest of your life, you’re going to know it’s real. And that’s kind of how it is for me. They stimulated me, and it was a temporary thing.
The effects lasted for some months, I would say. Some of them faded away quickly, some longer. And that built an ability that’s in me today based on that real experience. And it’s something words and teaching and talk could never have achieved.
SUMMARY: The rate of diagnosed cases of autism has more than doubled since 2000 and researchers have spent millions looking for causes and cures. In "NeuroTribes," author Steve Silberman explores the history behind this dramatic increase, arguing it's just always been much more common than we realized. William Brangham sits down with Silberman to discuss his work.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now the first of two looks we’re taking at the history of autism.
There seems to be more and more instances of it, but in this edition of the “NewsHour” Bookshelf, science writer Steve Silberman argues that the rise of autism is not some mysterious byproduct of the modern world, but instead a result of our growing understanding of the full range of the disorder.
William Brangham spoke with him recently in New York.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): The most recent federal data shows one in every 68 American children is diagnosed with autism. Fifteen years ago, it was one in every 150 children.
In his book “NeuroTribes,” Steve Silberman explores the history behind that dramatic increase. “NeuroTribes” has been lauded as one of the best scientific books of the past year. It won the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and made the best-of lists for over half-a-dozen newspapers and magazines.
Silberman says the genesis of the book came more than 15 years ago, after he wrote this story ("The Geek Syndrome") for “Wired” magazine about autistic kids in Silicon Valley. After it ran, Silberman was swamped with e-mails from others who were struggling with the disease.
STEVE SILBERMAN, Author, “NeuroTribes”: People were wrestling with very profound day-to-day problems with finding health care, finding employment, finding schools for their kids.
Meanwhile, the entire world was having a conversation about autism, but it was a completely different conversation. It was about whether or not vaccines caused autism. And that dominated virtually every mention of autism in the media. Certainly, if there was an article about autism that didn’t mention vaccines, the comment thread on the Internet would be about vaccines.
And so I started to think that there was a disjunction between the problems that autistic people and their families were dealing with every day of their lives and what the whole world was talking about.
I learned that what happened has less to do with the slow and cautious progress of science than it does with the seductive power of storytelling.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Silberman's deep dive into the world of autism took him back to the very first researchers who tried to define and diagnose the condition.
STEVE SILBERMAN: The true discover of autism was a guy named Hans Asperger in Vienna in the mid-1930s, and he and his colleagues discovered what we would now call the autism spectrum. It was a very, very broad condition with many different manifestations ranging from kids who couldn’t talk at all and would need help every day of their lives to one of his former patients became an astronomy professor, actually, but he was still autistic. ----- WILLIAM BRANGHAM:Silberman argues it was this broadened definition of autism, that coupled with better diagnostic tools and better public education, that explains the dramatic rise in the number of diagnosed cases, not the repeatedly debunked theory that vaccines cause autism.
SUMMARY: The story of autism is many stories -- from doctors, to parents, to the afflicted themselves. Journalists Caren Zucker and John Donvan examine that history in their new book, "In a Different Key: The Story of Autism." Jeffrey Brown sits down with the authors to discuss the evolving definition of the diagnosis and the constant of parental love.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Let’s turn to some new findings on autism, especially research showing brain changes happening in the womb. Scientists compared the brain tissue of children who had autism and died with those who didn’t have autism. They found that kids with autism had disorganization in regions of their brain essential for social functioning, emotions and communication, a conclusion drawn from discovering disruptions in these sections of the brain. Those gaps are shown here in purple.
The news came as the government revised upward its estimate of the prevalence of the disorder to one out of every 68 children in the U.S. That’s more than the previous autism estimate of one out of every 88 kids.
Eric Courchesne is an author of today’s research about the brain. He’s the director of the Autism Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego.
Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood. It is one of three recognized disorders in the autism spectrum (ASDs), the other two being Asperger syndrome, which lacks delays in cognitive development and language, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (commonly abbreviated as PDD-NOS), which is diagnosed when the full set of criteria for autism or Asperger syndrome are not met.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
* Any attempt to suppress human or Constitutional rights.
* Any law or policy that supports discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, race/color, gender, sexual orientation, or any law that does NOT support Equal Treatment under the law.
*Any law or policy that attempts to suppress Freedom of the Press or Free Speech.
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