Category: Autism

The Painful, Lonely Lives of Seniors With Autism

Posted on by Gregory Wood

How America neglects older adults on the spectrum

By Rachel Nuwer and Spectrum

Kurt remembers very little of what happened during the Fourth of July weekend in 2009. Then 49, he had been in his apartment when all of a sudden he became dizzy, nauseous and unable to speak properly. The right side of his body felt sluggish, so he called a friend to take him to the hospital and then staggered to his bed. (Kurt’s last name is being withheld to protect his privacy.)

When Kurt’s friend arrived, he phoned Kurt but got no answer. Peering through a window, the friend spotted Kurt in bed, not moving, so he ran to find the building manager, who let him in.

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Null and Noteworthy: Autism and aging, anorexia overlaps, pregnancy effects

Posted on by Gregory Wood

by Lauren Dattaro

 

Fortunately, many replications and null findings are making their way into journals — so many, in fact, that this newsletter will now be published monthly, rather than every other month. So keep an eye out for the next edition in March. In the meantime, thanks, as always, for your feedback, and please continue to send your thoughts, ideas, interesting studies and cat photos to laura@spectrumnews.org.

Aging up:
Though much autism research focuses on early development, scientists are increasingly working to understand how the brain may age differently in autistic and non-autistic people. A new study set out to replicate a pair of findings from 2015 and 2016. Both found that autistic adults lost many cognitive faculties at the same rate as non-autistic adults but retained more of their working and visual memory and ability to intuit others’ feelings, suggesting that autism has a ‘protective effect’ on aging.

Not so, according to the new study, which looked at 88 autistic and 88 non-autistic people between 30 and 89 years of age and was led by one of the co-investigators of the 2015 work. The team replicated nearly all of the previous findings — suggesting that autistic adults are not at any increased risk for cognitive difficulties as they age — but saw no evidence of the previously observed protective effect.

The work was published in Autism Research in December.