Anna Melnick, a member of Boston University’s Student Volunteers for Special Needs, said working with children with autism can be eye-opening.
“My boyfriend’s younger brother has autism and it has been an incredibly rewarding experience getting to know him over the past three years,” the College of Arts and Sciences sophomore said. “Not many people realize how frustrating it can be for someone who doesn’t have language as an option to express themselves.”
BU’s upcoming Autism Center of Excellence will focus on why patients with Autism Spectrum Disorders fail to acquire spoken language, officials related to the project said.
Psychology professor Helen Tager-Flusberg, the director of the new center, said recent research has not focused on autistic patients with verbal problems.
“The majority of funding hasn’t been steered toward understanding and developing treatments for older non-verbal children with ASD,” Tager-Flusberg said in an email. “This is the gap that our center will fill.”
The center will be employing a new research technique known as auditory-monitor mapping training. AMMT is a behavioral technique that uses motor activities and the use of singing to strengthen parts of the brain that are used in developing verbal communication. It is still being developed and tested in pilot studies, Tager-Flusberb said.
Tager-Flusberg said the center’s research into non-verbal children separates it from other centers of its kind.
“We at BU are uniquely focused on investigating the mechanisms that may explain why some children with ASD fail to learn to speak and in conducting trials of a novel treatment for these children,” she said.
Melnick said non-verbal patients suffer more than many people realize.
“Being able to say ‘I don’t feel well’ or ‘I’m hungry’ is something many people take for granted every day,” she said.
The $10 million, five-year grant was awarded by the National Institutes of Health and was highly competitive, said CAS Associate Dean for Research and Outreach James Jackson.
“The Austism Centers of Excellence is a highly competitive research program, and Helen Tager-Flusberg did an amazing job organizing BU’s strengths in this area and writing a great proposal,” he said.
Mike DeGuglielmo is a member of Autism Speaks, an organization dedicated to raising awareness in the Boston area. DeGuglielmo said BU has served as a leader in Greater Boston in raising awareness about ASD and the announcement of the center is good news.
“The establishment of this collaborative center in Boston, home to some of the finest minds in academia and medicine is an encouraging development,” DeGuglielmo, walk-events director for Autism Speaks, said.
NIH awarded the grant to three centers of excellence this year, compared to the six centers awarded in the last funding cycle, according to the press release. BU received the award along with the University of California, Los Angeles and Emory University.
Jackson said he is confident in the center’s ability to make headway in the study of ASD.
“The center is looking to apply those same ideas that work for stroke victims to regain speech and do clinical work and try to understand why autistic patients become non-verbal,” he said.
The center will work with researchers from all around Boston including the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Northeastern University, Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, according to the press release.
“Boston University and thus the greater Boston area may become the go-to place where this area of research comes to fruition and the place to study this area so that one day we may overcome and solve this problem,” Jackson said.
Jackson said receiving the grant is a huge honor for BU.
“We have a huge commitment to this, and it’s a big award,” he said. “It harnesses all our strengths of research and is an exceptional start.”
Melnick said she is proud of BU’s commitment.
“Boston has a reputation of being at the forefront of the medical world, and combined with BU’s dedicated research divisions, the new ACE program could not have chosen a better home,” she said. “Especially with BU’s ties in the past of supporting the autism community and research and development, the new center will undoubtedly change many lives for the better.”
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I would be highly interested in any results. My eight year old has tremendous recall in echolalia (entier scenes, etc) but cannot speak to tell you how he feels. He repeats the question with no answer. It is shocking to me as he can do so many things such as read, excels with technology and is doing a decent job keeping up with his classmates. Is there a list to sign up for the publication when complete?