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Autism and Developmental Disorders Colloquium Series

“Towards defining the phenotype in autism”

Joseph Piven, M.D.

Professor of Psychiatry, Pediatrics and Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine; Director, Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities

6:00 p.m., Wednesday, March 19, 2008
MIT Building 46-3002 (auditorium), followed by a reception

Building Address: 43 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA 02139

Hosted by the Brain Development and Disorders Project at MIT

Supported by the Simons Foundation and the Anne and Paul Marcus Family Foundation

Colloquia sponsored by the Autism Consortium

Please RSVP to lmavros@mit.edu

While the DSM IV definition of autism has utility for clinical practice, alternative approaches to defining the phenotype in autism may prove more useful in teasing apart the complex pathogenesis of this condition. In this presentation results from family genetic study will be reviewed along with results of structural neuroimaging studies of individuals with autism and Fragile X Syndrome. Family studies provide insights into milder manifestations of components of the full syndrome of autism in non-autistic relatives, including social cognitive deficits in non-autistic first-degree relatives that parallel findings in autistic individuals. Structural imaging studies provide evidence of an intermediate phenotype, more proximal to the underlying etiology of autism, that may be informative for molecular genetic studies as well as providing clues to the neurobiological basis of this condition.