So proud of our new paper, in @eclinicalmed.bsky.social, reporting on a feasibility study of a new co-produced peer group intervention (created by @ambitiousautism.bsky.social) for supporting wellbeing during the transition to adulthood for autistic young people. #AutRes
The messages from US government regarding autism are built on two assumptions that reflect the long-standing ableism underpinning healthcare systems in the United States and many other western countries. First, they assume that avoiding autism is so desirable that any intervention that might reduce its occurrence should be attempted, regardless of unknown harms and lack of evidence for benefits. Second, it assumes any intervention that is (erroneously) thought to increase the occurrence of autism should be avoided, regardless of robust evidence of benefit including decreased mortality, and weak evidence of association with autism. While these ableist assumptions are not novel, the incoherence of US federal guidance is now on full view.
New editorial on RFK Jr.’s ableist health policies:
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Left: Intracortical intensity profiles were extracted at each vertex of infant structural MRI scans. Intensities were sampled at 12 equivolumetric intracortical surfaces, spanning from the pial boundary (blue) to the white matter boundary (yellow), capturing signal variations across cortical depths, defined as microstructure profiles. Top right: Systematic changes in profile shape with respect to (i) center of gravity and (ii) variance. To illustrate this relationship, all profiles (across participants and regions) were sorted according to the respective moment, then averaged within 100 bins. Bottom right: Parcel-wise central moment distributions mapped on the dHCP 40-week surface template (see S1 Data). Excluded regions (i.e., von Economo areas LA1, LA2, LC1, LC2, LC3, LD, and LE and the cortical wall) are shown in gray.
How do #prenatal & #postnatal periods shape the developing human #cortex? This study uses #neonatal MRI to show that time in the womb drives widespread, uniform maturation, whereas time after birth produces more region- & depth-specific changes across the cortex @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/47o6rpk
2 new copyrighted measures dictating what autistics should do in research, and how?--a lot of autistic contributions (e.g. mine) get graded poorly, disparaged as non-meaningful, non-genuine, etc journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... authors gave "paid guest lectures" on this & declare no COIs?
Proud to share my first editorial as one of the editors of Autism @journalautism.bsky.social We wrote about our experiences of trying to implement participatory autism research for the first time in Brazil @tallytafla.bsky.social
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Our first official publication on Participatory Research in Portuguese is now available as a preprint! 🤩
Pesquisa participativa e a importância da inclusão de experts por experiência na pesquisa em saúde - Possibilidades e desafios para o contexto brasileiro osf.io/preprints/ps...
New blogpost on my concerns about Wellcome LEAP new $50m program on autism/microbiome links. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-le...
#autism #microbiome #biomarkers #diagnostic
Besides my personal experience, the call clearly has not been designed in collaboration with autistic people and without reading any of the literature on autistic community priorities and without any regard for what autistic people actually want from research.
I worked (unpaid and without recognition as a co-investigator) on the 1kd programme and I would never work with these people again. I was hospitalised with severe pregnancy complications and these people still kept emailing me asking me to finish analyses or people wouldn't get paid.
Very happy to share that Priscilla Godoy and I were awarded a new grant to conduct our implementation+effectiveness study of PACT in the Brazil public health system, which we are co-producing with Brazilian autistic adults and parents. We even have services in the middle of the Amazon...!!
Delighted to start the week with the first paper from my lab being accepted for publication. We report preliminary data on the feasibility of the preemptive iBASI therapy to support the early development of infants with family history of autism and ADHD in Brazil.
A happy day moving my lab (NINA Lab on Instagram) to our new work home at the Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo 😎🤓
Spent the weekend running training for Brazilian professionals in Paediatric Autism Communication Therapy (PACT)... our third training session in Brazil, now a total of 40 new PACT therapists in various parts the country, from Amazonas to Santa Catarina! www.pactbrasil.com.br
🧲⛓️💥❤️Recently I’ve been obsessed with the use of #attachment theory in #therapy. I found a resource that is 🔥: attachment styles, #cross-cultural validity, demystification of #attachment 🔮, stability vs change, intergenerational transmission. @pvrticka.bsky.social
pvrticka.com/attachment/a...