BrainBlog

The Short Life of a Diagnosis By SIMON BARON-COHEN, Op-Ed Contributor The New Yotk Times Published: November 10, 2009 "Asperger syndrome and autism should be thoroughly tested before being lumped together in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders." Read the Op-Ed piece

Like a Skyline Is Etched in His Head By JIM DWYER The New York Times Published: October 28, 2009 "Stephen Wiltshire, working only from the memory of a helicopter flight over New York, has been rendering the city’s 305 square miles along an arc of paper that is 19 feet long." Read the full article View the slideshow, "Portrait of the Artist," which shows parts of his amazing work

Dr. Leon Eisenberg, Pioneer in Autism Studies, Dies at 87 By BENEDICT CAREY Published: September 24, 2009 "Dr. Eisenberg conducted some of the first rigorous studies of autism, attention deficit disorder and learning delays." [snip] “Leon took a very courageous stand and denounced the way psychiatry treated children, this whole system in which we had a few rich kids and their parents getting psychoanalysis five days a week and still not being cured,” said C. Keith Conners, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “No one even knew what a cure looked like. He had this conviction that nothing was being done for the bulk of children who needed help, and that we had very little scientific data to guide us.” [snip] Read the full article