Archived news

May 2023

Prototypical autism: New diagnostic criteria and asymmetrical bifurcation model

Article from Laurent Mottron and David Gagnon in Acta Psychologica

The current formulation of the "autism spectrum" generates considerable diagnostic heterogeneity, which can hinder intervention and the advancement of basic research. In this article, we propose new diagnostic criteria for "prototypical" autism between the ages of 2 and 5.
In our reformulation work, we suggest a new conception of autism, in which we propose that it is a human possibility arising from a developmental bifurcation. Prototypical autism would follow a developmental trajectory marked by a progressive decline in social biases, starting at the end of the 1st year, then bifurcate towards a prototypical autistic presentation in the second half of the 2nd year of life. The integration of autism into asymmetrical developmental bifurcations would explain the absence of deleterious neurological and genetic markers, and the presence of familial transmission in canonical autistic presentations.



May 2023

Le titre de fellow, l’une des plus hautes distinctions décernées par la Société internationale de recherche sur l’autisme (INSAR), revient au Dr Laurent Mottron 

Sommité reconnue à l’international pour ses travaux de recherche portant sur l’autisme… La suite en suivant ce lien: https://medecine.umontreal.ca/2023/04/19/laurent-mottron-recoit-le-titre-de-fellow-2023-de-linsar/

March 2023

World Autism Day Events | The 2nd Autism Brain Science Forum hosted by the Sixth Hospital of Peking University

Virtual conference in English by Laurent Mottron

Prototypical Autism: new criteria and the asymmetrical bifurcation model.

Friday, March 24, 8:10 am to 8:50 am (date and time of Montreal)

Zoom link to the conference : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5544050961?pwd=Y08rNlJXOXNvN1djeGZ6Y3I4dVdZdz09

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ARRkZajlyLQNjiHwJg5UAQ

September 2023

Autism research laboratory coordinator
We are looking for a passionate laboratory coordinator with experience in research, large-scale project management or laboratory coordination. The successful candidate will be responsible for two specific major components:

Q1K Project Manager
His/her task is to set up and manage the "Recruitment and phenotyping" component of the Quebec 1000 familles (Q1K) project. Laurent Mottron's laboratory at Hôpital Rivière-des-Prairies is responsible for setting up the Q1K project, which is expected to involve 1,000 participants recruited through 4 collaborating sites.

Laboratory coordinator for the Centre de recherche, d'évaluation et d'intervention en autisme (CREIA)
In collaboration with the researchers and coordinators of their respective laboratories (Laboratoires Laurent Mottron, IDEA, LUDICA, PNLab), the incumbent will be responsible for the overall coordination of the CREIA, developing good clinical-research collaboration, actively participating in student training, funding applications, monitoring joint research projects, recruiting employees, etc.

Job offer details: http://grouperechercheautismemontreal.ca/Documents/Job%20offer%20Coordinator%20Q1K%20-%20CREIA.pdf

Deadline for applications: September 30, 2023 

May 2023

Issue 15 of Sur le Spectre magazine is now available

Also check out our YouTube channel, where several new podcasts are available.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-g4i5SdsnZD28Im0g9FXqw 

February 2023

Conference on "Prototypicity in Autism"

Presented in English by Laurent Mottron in collaboration with the University of Guangzhou in China

March 1, 2023 at 19:00
Join the Zoom conference
https://us04web.zoom.us/j/77872291080?pwd=4fQ1aO5OY8UOY9QGqxTfYhfEHZQkla.1 

March 2023

Spectrum Podcast 2 - Conversation with a Person with Autism

In this episode, a controversial topic in the field is discussed: autism in women.

Jessica Buteau, a woman with autism, and Dr. Laurent Mottron, a psychiatrist, question the diagnostic process, the cover-up and the possible distinctions that can be made between men and women with autism.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/2UfGrafjvhk

March 2023

Spectrum Podcast - Conversation with a Person with Autism

The brand new podcast On the Spectrum is now online.

For the first episode, we discuss parenting with Valérie Jessica Laporte, the content creator behind Bleuet atypique and a woman with autism, and with professor Isabelle Courcy (UdeM). In the episode, they look at the challenges that can be encountered by being autistic in the different stages of parenthood, from pregnancy to child rearing.

Facebook clip of the video https://www.facebook.com/reel/582854503776930/?s=single_unit

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNvdZnA4iIQ&t=5s

October 2022

Representativeness of autistic samples in studies recruiting through social media.

In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of autism research that recruits participants online for example via social media, where it can be difficult to control the composition of the sample that is obtained. There is therefore a risk of sampling bias causing the sample not to be representative. In this article, we investigated whether the risk of sampling bias seems to have practical implications by systematically exploring markers of bias in 36 studies that recruited participants through social media platforms. We examined potential discrepancies in demographics between the autistic participants and what has previously been reported about the autism population in the literature. Specifically, we looked at sex ratio, age at receiving an autism diagnosis, education level, unemployment rate and fraction of individuals with co-occurring intellectual disability. We found that the participants in most of the included studies were unrepresentative on at least one of the demographic variables, indicating sampling bias. Overall we found a tendency for the included studies to have a reversed sex-ratio (more females participating than males), a high age at receiving an autism diagnosis (median of 30 years), and a median of 60% with a college or university education. Our results suggest that selection bias may be present in many of the investigated studies and thus that results from these may not be generalizable to autism in general.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aur.2777 

October 2022

Stanford Conference Neurodiversity Summit 2022

How do you contribute to the Neurodiverse Community?

Education, Service, Research, and/or Advocacy
Keynote Presentation Laurent Mottron, October 24, 2022
Collaborating with Autistic Scientists, the Montreal Group Experience

https://med.stanford.edu/neurodiversity/SNS2022.html 

October 2022


Conference October 27 & 28, 2022
On Neurodevelopmental Conditions

LAURENT MOTTRON, Keynote Speaker*
* With the intellectual participation of A. Ostrolenk and D. Gagnon

Is there an autistic way to learn language?
(Presented in English)

Breakout Presentation:
Autism: differential diagnoses from childhood to adulthood
(Presented in French)

https://fr.summit-scert.com/conference2022

November 2022


26th Congress, November 3-5, 2022

B6 - The clinical and scientific issues of autism diagnosis: where does the "autism spectrum" end? 
by Dr Laurent Mottron et Dre Isabelle Marleau – Ordre des Psychologues du Québec (illuxi.com)

https://congres2022.ordre-des-psychologues.illuxi.com/

February  2022

Positive, negative, neutral-or unknown? The perceived valence of emotions expressed by young autistic children in a novel context suited to autism

In this article, Claudine Jacques and her colleagues explain that the emotions of people with autism are considered either too negative and not positive enough, or as unusual, from a very young age. Two explanatory factors may account for these perceptions. The first factor is that observers may not understand the facial expressions of people with autism. The second is the contexts that are recommended for assessing the emotions of people with autism, as these would be more appropriate for people without autism. In our study, we assessed the emotions of young children with autism in a context including objects likely to interest them, the Montreal Stimulation Situation. In this novel setting, the facial expressions of young children with and without autism were assessed as positive, negative, neutral, or "unknown"-a category we created to characterize emotions that observers perceive but do not understand. The results of the study showed that children with autism and typical children did not differ in positive, negative or neutral facial emotions. They only differed in the expression of unknown emotions, which were only present in children with autism. This study also found that there was a co-occurrence between the repetitive behaviors of children with autism and positive, neutral, and unknown emotions, but not with negative emotions. 

November 2021

Childhood diagnoses in individuals diagnosed with autism in adulthood

When a diagnosis of autism is made only in adulthood, one may wonder whether it is because the person was previously thought to have another condition that masked the autism, or that he or she just did not have enough signs to be assessed. To answer this question, we looked at the Danish database to see what diagnoses these people had in childhood. The results show that the vast majority of individuals diagnosed after age 18 had no other diagnosis before age 11. This suggests that late diagnoses are made in individuals who show very few signs in childhood, and therefore do not fit the classic definition of autism. This raises the question of whether early and late diagnoses really belong to the same conditions, with a high risk that some of them do not.  

June 2021

A radical change in our autism research strategy is needed: Back to prototypes

Commentary by Laurent Mottron on a controversial issue related to how best to most effectively pursue autism research in the future. Responses from various researchers as well as Laurent Mottron's response to these opinions.

This comment was the subject of Laurent Mottron's webinar "On the need for radical change in autism research” of August 31, 2021. 

August 2021

WEBINAR WITH LAURENT MOTTRON 


On the need for radical change in autism research

Dr. Mottron has written several commentaries (Progress, Radical Change, Heterogeneity) on why we need "a radical change in our autism research strategy."
In a webinar, he makes his case and answers Spectrum's questions. 

July 2021

In Prototypical Autism, the Genetic Ability to Learn Language Is Triggered by Structured Information, Not Only by Exposure to Oral Language

In this article, Laurent Mottron, Alexia Ostrolenk, and David Gagnon stress the importance of considering the diversity of learning styles. In prototypical autism, the genetic ability to learn language is triggered by structured information, not just exposure to oral language It has now been shown that autistic people can develop / learn language in an atypical way; for example by favoring non-social learning (television, radio, books) rather than social learning (verbal exchanges with others). This non-social language acquisition is a strong argument in favor of nativist models of human language acquisition and puts into perspective the importance of social interaction in the process. Nativist models suggest that mental structures present from birth allow us to acquire language skills.

July 2021

Autism comorbidities show elevated female-to-male odds ratios and are associated with the age of first autism diagnosis

New article of Eya-Mist Rødgaard and colleagues investigating autism comorbidity using the Danish National Patient Registry. The results indicate that females with autism have a higher risk of comorbidity than would be expected from sex-ratios in the general population, and that childhood comorbidity rates are strongly associated with the age at which autism is diagnosed.

Interview by Niko McCarty, Spectrum (New-York / California) about our article. 

May 2021

Many parents report a phenomenon of language regression at a young age in their autistic child. That is, their child had started their language development, but with the onset of autistic symptoms, the child lost the use of previously acquired language. This phenomenon is generally considered to be a sign of a poor language prognosis, without there being any solid evidence on the subject.
This study shows that autistic people who have experienced language regression have the same language prognosis as other autistic people. Their development process is however atypical and marked by a language plateau, followed by catching up in language level. 

May 2021

Rachel Nuwer's Spectrum article highlights the group's work: Finding strengths in autism -
Autism comprises a set of difficulties, but growing evidence suggests that certain abilities also define the
condition.

April 2021

The Spring 2020 issue of Sur le Spectre magazine is now available.

Happy reading! 

December 2020

Our point of view on the question of diagnosis!

- Autism, the construction of an epidemic, Transcription, OCT-OPUS training

- Reflection on the cliche: Autism is heterogeneous, Fous de Normandie

- The heterogeneity of autism in 2020: nature, or culture? General public conference Strasbourg  

October 2020

The Fall 2020 issue of Sur le Spectre magazine is now available.

May 2020

The Spring 2020 issue of Sur le Spectre magazine is now available. Happy reading!

January 2021

Launch of our YouTube channel "Sur le Spectre".

You can watch the first video uploaded.

Autistic people in research: decreasing differences?

January 2021

What are the preferred interests and repetitive behaviors autistic children?

We are looking for PARENTS with an autistic child, PROFESSIONALS working with autistic children and AUTISTIC ADULTS in order to participate in a study!

PARENTS of children aged 2 to 6 - For more information or to participate now, click here!
PARENTS of children aged 6 to 12 - For more information or to participate now, click here! 
PROFESSIONALS - For more information or to participate now, click here!
AUTISTIC ADULTS - For more information or to participate now, click here!

April 2019

Laurent Mottron and Danilo Bzdok co-author an article in Molecular Psychiatry, on heterogeneity in autism. 

October 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Sur le Spectre magazine is now available. Happy reading!

October 2019

Congratulations to Dr. Laurent Mottron, who became a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, which recognised his contributions and the quality of his research.

August 2019

Eya-Mist Rødgaard, Isabelle Soulières and Laurent Mottron publish a meta-meta analysis in JAMA, suggesting possible overdiagnosis of autism. See UdeM’s news feed, the JAMA article, listen to Laurent Mottron’s interview on Radio-Canada

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