SMIL Autism Resources

Honoring the life of Steve Silberman, who contributed to our understanding of autism and helped change the path of research and practices. He passed away at the age of 66 on Aug. 29 at his home in San Francisco.

Autism: A Neuromovement - The Past, Present, and Future of Neurodiversity Why is Autism history important and how has this turbulent history had an impact on our current understanding? Award-winning science writer Steve Silberman j...

50,300+ hits of our special topic!

Precision Medicine in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Personalized Characterization of Autism from Molecules to Behavior Special Issue in journal Journal of Personalized Medicine: Precision Medicine in Neurodevelopmental Disorders: Personalized Characterization of Autism from Molecules to Behavior

Cameras ready, set ready, Go PodCast for the Autism Renaissance!

Our brilliant future is guaranteed. Look at the new SMIL generation already making a better world for all. Congratulations PhD class of 2024! I am so very proud of you!

Great collection of papers!

Editorial: Women in neuroscience of Bioelectronic Medicine Editorial: Women in Neuroscience of Bioelectronic Medicine.Bioelectronic Medicine is becoming the landmark of a new era of therapies, where pharmacological treatments are replaced or combined with the leverage of electricity to restore optimal function of organs and systems. The list of applications...

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/801/autism-the-movement-perspective/overview

This was a lot of fun!

Autism: The Movement Perspective Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are portrayed as cognitive and social disorders. Undoubtedly, impairments in communication and restricted-repetitive behaviors that define the disorders have a profound impact on social interactions. But can we go beyond the descriptive nature of this definition and o...

Love you Anne, wherever you are, I am sure you are changing it for the better. What an honor to have met you and to have learned so much from you. Rest in power my dear friend and mentor until we meet again.

The Equinox at the Salk Institute - beautiful symmetry and hidden Fibonacci series

Congratulations to Hannah Grace Varkey on her new paper!! Beautiful work and open access methods!

Infants on the move: bibliometric analyses of observational vs. digital means of screening infant development Neurodevelopmental disorders are on the rise, yet their average diagnosis is after 4.5 years old. This delay is partly due to reliance on social-communication criteria, which require longer maturation than scaffolding elements of neuromotor control. Much earlier criteria could include reflexes, mo...

wonderful work by Yoram Bonneh's lab in BarIlan U in Israel!

Oculomotor randomness is higher in autistic children and increases with the severity of symptoms The eye movements of young children were analyzed after watching short video clips featuring social interactions. The results showed that the times of the eye movements are distributed in a way that ...

Over a decade later the work has been independently reproduced in the eye system https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.3083

Autism: the micro-movement perspective The current assessment of behaviors in the inventories to diagnose autism spectrum disorders (ASD) focus on observation and discrete categorizations. Behaviors require movements, yet measurements of physical movements are seldom included. Their inclusion however, could provide an objective character...

Our latest paper on autism

The time is ripe for the renaissance of autism treatments: evidence from clinical practitioners IntroductionRecent changes in diagnostics criteria have contributed to the broadening of the autism spectrum disorders and left clinicians ill-equipped to treat the highly heterogeneous spectrum that now includes toddlers and children with sensory and motor issues.MethodsTo uncover the clinicians’...

Our latest paper!

The time is ripe for the renaissance of autism treatments: evidence from clinical practitioners IntroductionRecent changes in diagnostics criteria have contributed to the broadening of the autism spectrum disorders and left clinicians ill-equipped to treat the highly heterogeneous spectrum that now includes toddlers and children with sensory and motor issues.MethodsTo uncover the clinicians’...

Great article!

Who Autism Research Leaves Out If we want to truly understand autism, we must expand the zone of the researchable autistic, writes Hari Srinivasan.

Our work is attracting attention!

Connecting movement and cognition through different modes of learning This chapter introduces movement and its sensation as a fundamental ingredient of all forms of learning and self-motivation. Taken from the vantage po…

Great conference July 21-23 at the International Association for Spell to Communicate

Reason number 3141592 why learning math (and stats!) is awesome! You get to do super cool research - or at least you are able to read it with some degree of technical understanding.

This weekend, I had the honor of talking with Motormorphisis Keynote speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Torres who leads the Sensory Motor Integration Lab at Rutgers University. Her research is cutting edge, community informed, and full of yummy statistics and math! Totally star struck! 🤩

On June 30th, 2023, we, the New Jersey Autism Center of Excellence under the leadership of Principal Investigator, Professor Liz Torres, ended its tenure 2018-2023. It was a wonderful opportunity to serve our community and we continue to upkeep resources and community-informed research here and on our SMIL: Sensory Motor Integration Lab page. Resources will also remain on this page. Further, webinars and NJACE resources can be found at https://sensorymotorintegrationlab.com/new-jersey-autism-center-of-excellence/. It was a great honor to work for you.

It’s Not Oughtism: Rethinking the Urgency Over Early Interventions – Sensory-Motor Integration Lab (SMIL)

Very relevant to many families on the spectrum, by John Summers

MassHealth’s Personal Care Attendant Program’s hybrid model cheats families like mine - The Boston Globe A tweak in policy would help.

Hello NJACE Community,

Researchers from Rowan University invite you to participate in a research study: Tracking the Blues in Minimally Verbal Autistic Adults

They are looking for the following participants for a study on mood in autistic adults with limited or no spoken language.

Participants must:
-Be 18-45 years old
-Have a previous diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
-Communicate with single words or phrase speech, or use no verbal speech at all
-Be able to walk
-Have a parent or close caregiver who is also willing to participate.

Please contact Robyn Himelstein of the Tracking the Blues Study Team, via phone 856-431-2816 or email ([email protected]) for more information.

The study involves coming into our lab at the Rowan main campus (Glassboro) for about two hours.

Thank you!

Questions? Contact Dr. Katherine Gotham (Principal Investigator) at [email protected].

This study has been approved by the RowanSOM IRB (Study # PRO-2021-700)

BALLET for Autism Communication using the body language https://newjersey.news12.com/rutgers-researchers-team-with-ballet-company-for-autism-communication-study

Rutgers researchers team with ballet company for autism communication study Two dancers in Roxey Ballet have each been outfitted with 17 sensors while rehearsing.

Register FREE to our Autism conference this April 16th. We have already 430+ people registered and I am really looking forward to meeting you in person or greeting you online. Come celebrate with us the new inclusive and diversified autism model for the 21st Century.

Nearly a decade ago at Profectum and still waiting for movement to shift center and front in autism.

Using Movement to Close Sensory Feedback Loops 2014 03 CA The Micro-Movement-Spikes(TM) were invented by the Torres Sensory Motor Laboratory and published on a landmark Frontiers Neuroscience paper in 2013. This pap...

Hello NJ Autism Community,

Save the Date for the New Jersey Autism Center of Excellence Conference to take place on April 16th at the Hillel, Rutgers University, College Ave Campus.

Come celebrate Autism achievements with us, bringing research, education, and practices to the 21st Century and launching our Rutgers Autism Certificate of Excellence RU-ACE.

Please use the QR code copied on the NJACE flyer to register for this event. Thank you in advance.

Sincerely,
The NJACE TEAM

Dr. Elizabeth Torres's article the, "Brain-Wave Data and Hearing Test May Help Diagnosis Autism Earlier" is now live :)

Please view with the following link:
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/brain-wave-data-and-hearing-test-may-help-diagnosis-autism-earlier

Brain-Wave Data and Hearing Test May Help Diagnosis Autism Earlier Brain-wave data collected during a hearing test routinely given to newborns could help clinicians spot neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism in early infancy, according to a new Rutgers-led study.

Explaining causes of differences in social interactions/communications/repetitive movements (autism)

Sensing echoes: temporal misalignment in auditory brainstem responses as the earliest marker of neurodevelopmental derailment Abstract. Neurodevelopmental disorders are on the rise worldwide, with diagnoses that detect derailment from typical milestones by 3 to 4.5 years of age. By the

Energized after my ThinkTank meeting in Northern CA. Meet here this amazing Fulbright Scholar, Mom, Nurse, Midwife, Researcher Dr. Susan Crawford and her son on this incredibly uplifting short video.

RUNNING FOR AUTISM This is "RUNNING FOR AUTISM" by Dr. Susan Crawford on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

Our Director Professor Elizabeth Barbara Torres presented the latest research from her lab at the Autism Tree Project Conference in collaboration with UCTV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8kitTjnJ0g The work is now in press at the PNAS Nexus. It demonstrates the profound delays in signal processing and transmission across the brainstem along with the reduced access to the full spectrum of frequencies in sound processing for pre-term babies and babies who 3-4 years later received the autism diagnosis. The Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) test is routinely given to neonates at birth and can also be given later in life. With very little cost and effort this could become the earliest personalized screener for neurodevelopmental derailment and prodrome autism.

Early Detection of Neurodevelopmental Derailment Leading to Autism with Elizabeth Torres There is a critical need for early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders. Elizabeth Torres, Ph.D., Rutgers University, shares new developments in that co...

John Summers article originally published in The Nation: "Private Equity Comes to Dominate Autism Services" should make us all think about prevalent autism therapies and their societal consequences. This is a good read for anyone in this ecosystem. https://johnsummers.co/as-private-equity-comes-to-dominate-autism-services/

The 2023 International Conference of Profectum is open for registration. Centered on DIR and overlooked domains impacting neurodevelopment!