WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.341 I always wanted to become a walking laboratory of social engagement: 00:00:06.313 --> 00:00:11.683 to resonate other people's feelings, thoughts, intentions, motivations, 00:00:11.707 --> 00:00:13.368 in the act of being with them. 00:00:14.999 --> 00:00:19.528 As a scientist, I always wanted to measure that resonance, 00:00:20.776 --> 00:00:23.394 that sense of the other that happens so quickly, 00:00:23.418 --> 00:00:24.725 in the blink of an eye. 00:00:25.682 --> 00:00:28.008 We intuit other people's feelings; 00:00:28.032 --> 00:00:31.175 we know the meaning of their actions even before they happen. 00:00:31.959 --> 00:00:33.705 We're always in this stance 00:00:33.729 --> 00:00:36.811 of being the object of somebody else's subjectivity. 00:00:36.835 --> 00:00:39.575 We do that all the time. We just can't shake it off. 00:00:40.025 --> 00:00:43.724 It's so important that the very tools we use to understand ourselves, 00:00:43.748 --> 00:00:45.575 to understand the world around us, 00:00:45.599 --> 00:00:47.205 are shaped by that stance. 00:00:48.226 --> 00:00:50.277 We are social to the core. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:51.572 --> 00:00:54.023 So my journey in autism really started 00:00:54.047 --> 00:00:57.653 when I lived in a residential unit for adults with autism. 00:00:58.068 --> 00:01:01.159 Most of those individuals had spent most of their lives 00:01:01.183 --> 00:01:02.668 in long-stay hospitals. 00:01:02.692 --> 00:01:04.157 This is a long time ago. 00:01:05.021 --> 00:01:08.548 And for them, autism was devastating. 00:01:09.395 --> 00:01:12.038 They had profound intellectual disabilities. 00:01:12.558 --> 00:01:13.792 They didn't talk. 00:01:14.310 --> 00:01:15.629 But most of all, 00:01:16.217 --> 00:01:21.146 they were extraordinarily isolated from the world around them, 00:01:21.170 --> 00:01:23.007 from their environment 00:01:23.031 --> 00:01:24.904 and from the people. 00:01:25.392 --> 00:01:28.219 In fact, at the time, if you walked into a school 00:01:28.243 --> 00:01:30.031 for individuals with autism, 00:01:30.055 --> 00:01:32.368 you'd hear a lot of noise, 00:01:32.392 --> 00:01:36.465 plenty of commotion, actions, people doing things. 00:01:37.730 --> 00:01:40.215 But they're always doing things by themselves. 00:01:41.405 --> 00:01:44.886 So they may be looking at a light in the ceiling, 00:01:45.527 --> 00:01:48.309 or they may be isolated in the corner, 00:01:48.936 --> 00:01:52.471 or they might be engaged in these repetitive movements, 00:01:52.495 --> 00:01:55.914 in self-stimulatory movements that led them nowhere. 00:01:56.558 --> 00:01:59.157 Extremely, extremely isolated. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:00.625 --> 00:02:06.205 Well, now we know that autism is this disruption, 00:02:06.229 --> 00:02:09.746 the disruption of this resonance that I am telling you about. 00:02:09.770 --> 00:02:11.704 These are survival skills. 00:02:11.728 --> 00:02:13.855 These are survival skills that we inherited 00:02:14.638 --> 00:02:18.019 over many, many hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:18.845 --> 00:02:23.513 You see, babies are born in a state of utter fragility. 00:02:24.032 --> 00:02:26.161 Without the caregiver, they wouldn't survive, 00:02:26.185 --> 00:02:28.691 so it stands to reason that nature would endow them 00:02:28.715 --> 00:02:30.492 with these mechanisms of survival. 00:02:32.169 --> 00:02:34.112 They orient to the caregiver. 00:02:34.525 --> 00:02:37.377 From the first days and weeks of life, 00:02:37.940 --> 00:02:40.674 babies prefer to hear human sounds, 00:02:40.698 --> 00:02:42.822 rather than just sounds in the environment. 00:02:42.846 --> 00:02:45.323 They prefer to look at people rather than at things, 00:02:45.347 --> 00:02:48.688 and even as they're looking at people, they look at people's eyes, 00:02:49.747 --> 00:02:53.955 because the eye is the window to the other person's experiences, 00:02:53.979 --> 00:02:56.437 so much so that they even prefer to look at people 00:02:56.461 --> 00:02:59.700 who are looking at them rather than people who are looking away. 00:03:00.525 --> 00:03:03.107 Well, they orient to the caregiver. 00:03:03.131 --> 00:03:04.764 The caregiver seeks the baby. 00:03:05.272 --> 00:03:08.520 And it's out of this mutually reinforcing choreography 00:03:09.085 --> 00:03:12.880 that a lot that is of importance to the emergence of mind -- 00:03:12.904 --> 00:03:16.428 the social mind, the social brain -- depends on. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.587 --> 00:03:20.659 We always think about autism 00:03:20.683 --> 00:03:25.323 as something that happens later on in life. 00:03:25.347 --> 00:03:28.752 It doesn't; it begins with the beginning of life. 00:03:30.901 --> 00:03:36.496 As babies engage with caregivers, they soon realize that, well, 00:03:36.520 --> 00:03:40.642 there is something between the ears that is very important -- 00:03:40.666 --> 00:03:44.081 it's invisible, you can't see it, but it's really critical. 00:03:44.849 --> 00:03:46.776 And that thing is called attention. 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:48.133 And they learn soon enough, 00:03:48.157 --> 00:03:50.745 even before they can utter one word, 00:03:50.769 --> 00:03:53.652 that they can take that attention and move somewhere 00:03:54.273 --> 00:03:56.071 in order to get things they want. 00:03:57.555 --> 00:04:00.655 They also learn to follow other people's gazes, 00:04:00.679 --> 00:04:04.664 because whatever people are looking at is what they are thinking about. 00:04:06.704 --> 00:04:10.350 And soon enough, they start to learn about the meaning of things, 00:04:10.374 --> 00:04:12.747 because when somebody is looking at something 00:04:12.771 --> 00:04:14.989 or somebody is pointing at something, 00:04:15.013 --> 00:04:17.186 they're not just getting a directional cue. 00:04:17.752 --> 00:04:21.435 They are getting the other person's meaning of that thing, 00:04:21.459 --> 00:04:22.669 the attitude. 00:04:22.693 --> 00:04:27.464 And soon enough, they start building this body of meanings, 00:04:27.488 --> 00:04:31.340 but meanings that were acquired within the realm of social interaction. 00:04:32.110 --> 00:04:34.025 Those are meanings that are acquired 00:04:34.049 --> 00:04:36.681 as part of their shared experiences with others. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:38.086 --> 00:04:43.902 Well, this is a 15-month-old little girl, 00:04:45.512 --> 00:04:47.159 and she has autism. 00:04:48.594 --> 00:04:54.382 And I am coming so close to her that I am maybe two inches from her face, 00:04:54.406 --> 00:04:56.241 and she's quite oblivious to me. 00:04:56.265 --> 00:04:59.693 Imagine if I did that to you, came two inches from your face. 00:04:59.717 --> 00:05:01.922 You'd do probably two things, wouldn't you? 00:05:01.946 --> 00:05:04.544 You would recoil. You would call the police. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:04.568 --> 00:05:05.742 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:05:05.766 --> 00:05:06.919 You would do something, 00:05:06.943 --> 00:05:11.001 because it's literally impossible to penetrate somebody's physical space 00:05:11.025 --> 00:05:12.428 and not get that reaction. 00:05:12.452 --> 00:05:15.907 We do so, remember, intuitively, effortlessly. 00:05:15.931 --> 00:05:17.096 This is our body wisdom; 00:05:17.120 --> 00:05:19.318 it's not something mediated by our language. 00:05:19.342 --> 00:05:21.773 Our body just knows that. 00:05:22.269 --> 00:05:24.637 And we've known that for a long time. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:24.661 --> 00:05:27.576 And this is not something that happens to humans only. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:30.800 It happens to some of our phyletic cousins, 00:05:30.824 --> 00:05:34.890 because if you're a monkey, and you look at another monkey, 00:05:34.914 --> 00:05:38.908 and that monkey has a higher hierarchy position than you, 00:05:38.932 --> 00:05:42.461 and that is considered to be a signal or threat, 00:05:42.485 --> 00:05:44.879 well, you are not going to be alive for long. 00:05:45.365 --> 00:05:50.197 So something that in other species are survival mechanisms, 00:05:50.221 --> 00:05:53.328 without which they wouldn't basically live, 00:05:53.352 --> 00:05:55.883 we bring into the context of human beings, 00:05:55.907 --> 00:05:59.624 and this is what we need to simply act, socially. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:00.180 --> 00:06:02.949 Now, she is oblivious to me and I'm so close to her, 00:06:02.973 --> 00:06:04.947 and you think, maybe she can see you, 00:06:04.971 --> 00:06:06.482 maybe she can hear you. 00:06:06.506 --> 00:06:08.128 Well, a few minutes later, 00:06:08.152 --> 00:06:10.093 she goes to the corner of the room, 00:06:10.117 --> 00:06:13.867 and she finds a tiny little piece of candy, an M&M. 00:06:14.859 --> 00:06:19.376 So I could not attract her attention, 00:06:19.400 --> 00:06:21.271 but something -- a thing -- did. 00:06:21.930 --> 00:06:24.447 Now, most of us make a big dichotomy 00:06:24.471 --> 00:06:27.351 between the world of things and the world of people. 00:06:28.882 --> 00:06:33.373 Now, for this girl, that division line is not so clear, 00:06:33.397 --> 00:06:36.503 and the world of people is not attracting her 00:06:36.527 --> 00:06:37.986 as much as we would like. 00:06:38.010 --> 00:06:41.697 Now, remember that we learn a great deal by sharing experiences. 00:06:42.445 --> 00:06:48.306 What she is doing right now is that her path of learning is diverging, 00:06:48.330 --> 00:06:50.071 moment by moment, 00:06:50.095 --> 00:06:53.315 as she is isolating herself further and further. 00:06:53.913 --> 00:06:56.855 So we feel sometimes that the brain is deterministic, 00:06:56.879 --> 00:06:59.056 the brain determines who we're going to be. 00:06:59.429 --> 00:07:02.217 But, in fact, the brain also becomes who we are, 00:07:02.241 --> 00:07:06.230 and at the same time that her behaviors are taking away 00:07:06.254 --> 00:07:08.416 from the realm of social interaction, 00:07:08.440 --> 00:07:10.465 this is what's happening with her mind, 00:07:10.489 --> 00:07:12.905 and this is what's happening with her brain. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:15.143 --> 00:07:20.343 Well, autism is the most strongly genetic condition 00:07:20.367 --> 00:07:22.239 of all developmental disorders. 00:07:24.461 --> 00:07:26.119 And it's a brain disorder. 00:07:26.695 --> 00:07:29.924 It's a disorder that begins much prior to the time 00:07:29.948 --> 00:07:31.263 that the child is born. 00:07:32.217 --> 00:07:36.198 We now know that there is a very broad spectrum of autism. 00:07:36.222 --> 00:07:39.691 There are those individuals who are profoundly intellectually disabled 00:07:39.715 --> 00:07:41.672 but there are those that are gifted. 00:07:41.696 --> 00:07:44.090 There are those individuals who don't talk at all; 00:07:44.114 --> 00:07:46.502 there are those individuals who talk too much. 00:07:46.526 --> 00:07:50.023 There are those individuals that if you observe them in their school, 00:07:50.047 --> 00:07:53.717 you see them running the periphery fence all the school day if you let them, 00:07:53.741 --> 00:07:56.102 to those individuals who cannot stop coming to you 00:07:56.126 --> 00:07:58.979 and trying to engage you repeatedly, relentlessly, 00:07:59.091 --> 00:08:01.360 but often in an awkward fashion, 00:08:02.232 --> 00:08:04.889 without that immediate resonance. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:05.812 --> 00:08:09.558 Well, this is much more prevalent than we thought at the time. 00:08:09.582 --> 00:08:10.993 When I started in this field, 00:08:11.017 --> 00:08:14.105 we thought there were four individuals with autism per 10,000 -- 00:08:14.129 --> 00:08:15.400 a very rare condition. 00:08:15.861 --> 00:08:19.515 Well, now we know it's more like one in 100. 00:08:19.957 --> 00:08:23.245 There are millions of individuals with autism all around us. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:25.216 --> 00:08:28.469 The societal cost of this condition is huge, 00:08:28.585 --> 00:08:31.533 in the US alone, maybe 35 to 80 billion dollars. 00:08:31.557 --> 00:08:32.745 And you know what? 00:08:32.769 --> 00:08:37.406 Most of those funds are associated with adolescents and particularly adults 00:08:37.430 --> 00:08:39.181 who are severely disabled, 00:08:39.205 --> 00:08:41.366 individuals who need wraparound services -- 00:08:41.390 --> 00:08:43.646 services that are very, very intensive. 00:08:43.670 --> 00:08:47.756 And those services can cost in excess of 60,000 to 80,000 dollars a year. 00:08:48.536 --> 00:08:51.760 Those are individuals who did not benefit from early treatment, 00:08:52.474 --> 00:08:56.612 because now we know that autism creates itself 00:08:56.636 --> 00:09:00.788 as individuals diverge in that pathway of learning that I mentioned to you. 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:03.773 Were we to be able to identify this condition 00:09:03.797 --> 00:09:06.547 at an earlier point, and intervene and treat -- 00:09:07.812 --> 00:09:11.866 I can tell you, this has been probably something that has changed my life 00:09:11.890 --> 00:09:13.186 in the past 10 years, 00:09:13.210 --> 00:09:17.464 this notion that we can absolutely attenuate this condition. 00:09:18.922 --> 00:09:21.277 Also, we have a window of opportunity, 00:09:21.301 --> 00:09:23.921 because the brain is malleable for just so long, 00:09:24.437 --> 00:09:27.950 and that window of opportunity happens in the first three years of life. 00:09:27.974 --> 00:09:30.685 It's not that that window closes; it doesn't. 00:09:31.621 --> 00:09:34.134 But it diminishes considerably. 00:09:34.899 --> 00:09:37.997 And yet, the median age of diagnosis in this country 00:09:38.021 --> 00:09:39.933 is still about five years, 00:09:39.957 --> 00:09:42.052 and in disadvantaged populations, 00:09:42.076 --> 00:09:45.205 the populations that don't have access to clinical services, 00:09:45.229 --> 00:09:47.642 rural populations, minorities, 00:09:48.338 --> 00:09:51.047 the age of diagnosis is later still, 00:09:51.071 --> 00:09:53.096 which is almost as if I were to tell you 00:09:53.120 --> 00:09:56.887 that we are condemning those communities to have individuals with autism 00:09:56.911 --> 00:09:59.234 whose condition is going to be more severe. 00:10:00.162 --> 00:10:02.706 So I feel that we have a bioethical imperative. 00:10:03.168 --> 00:10:04.897 The science is there. 00:10:06.025 --> 00:10:08.145 But no science is of relevance 00:10:08.169 --> 00:10:11.098 if it doesn't have an impact on the community. 00:10:11.727 --> 00:10:14.681 And we just can't afford that missed opportunity, 00:10:14.705 --> 00:10:17.650 because children with autism become adults with autism. 00:10:18.412 --> 00:10:22.416 And we feel that those things we can do 00:10:22.440 --> 00:10:24.818 for these children, for those families, early on, 00:10:24.842 --> 00:10:27.019 will have lifetime consequences -- 00:10:27.043 --> 00:10:31.051 for the child, for the family, and for the community at large. 00:10:31.075 --> 00:10:33.648 So this is our view of autism. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:34.145 --> 00:10:37.467 There are over a hundred genes that are associated with autism. 00:10:37.491 --> 00:10:39.450 In fact, we believe there are going to be 00:10:39.474 --> 00:10:43.279 something between 300 and 600 genes associated with autism, 00:10:43.303 --> 00:10:46.606 and genetic anomalies, much more than just genes. 00:10:47.460 --> 00:10:50.779 And we actually have a bit of a question here, 00:10:51.644 --> 00:10:54.929 because if there are so many different causes of autism, 00:10:54.953 --> 00:10:59.221 how do you go from those liabilities to the actual syndrome? 00:10:59.245 --> 00:11:00.796 Because people like myself, 00:11:01.530 --> 00:11:03.767 when we walk into a playroom, 00:11:03.791 --> 00:11:06.149 we recognize a child as having autism. 00:11:06.835 --> 00:11:09.063 So how do you go from multiple causes 00:11:09.087 --> 00:11:11.415 to a syndrome that has some homogeneity? 00:11:12.491 --> 00:11:15.182 And the answer is what lies in between, 00:11:15.753 --> 00:11:17.185 which is development. 00:11:17.660 --> 00:11:22.433 And in fact, we are very interested in those first two years of life, 00:11:22.457 --> 00:11:26.245 because those liabilities don't necessarily convert into autism. 00:11:26.269 --> 00:11:28.027 Autism creates itself. 00:11:28.812 --> 00:11:32.657 Were we to be able to intervene during those years of life, 00:11:33.569 --> 00:11:38.985 we might attenuate for some, and God knows, maybe even prevent for others. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:39.975 --> 00:11:41.213 So how do we do that? 00:11:41.837 --> 00:11:44.729 How do we enter that feeling of resonance, 00:11:44.753 --> 00:11:47.547 how do we enter another person's being? 00:11:49.137 --> 00:11:52.252 I remember when I interacted with that 15-month-old, 00:11:52.276 --> 00:11:54.414 the thing that came to my mind was, 00:11:54.438 --> 00:11:56.751 "How do you come into her world? 00:11:57.410 --> 00:12:00.807 Is she thinking about me? Is she thinking about others?" 00:12:01.910 --> 00:12:04.760 Well, it's hard to do that, 00:12:04.784 --> 00:12:06.962 so we had to create the technologies. 00:12:06.986 --> 00:12:09.455 We had to basically step inside a body. 00:12:09.479 --> 00:12:12.073 We had to see the world through her eyes. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:13.192 --> 00:12:15.504 And so in the past many years, 00:12:15.528 --> 00:12:17.924 we've been building these new technologies 00:12:17.948 --> 00:12:19.529 that are based on eye tracking. 00:12:19.553 --> 00:12:24.469 We can see, moment by moment, what children are engaging with. 00:12:26.046 --> 00:12:27.810 This is my colleague, Warren Jones, 00:12:27.834 --> 00:12:31.128 with whom we've been building these methods, these studies, 00:12:31.152 --> 00:12:32.481 for the past 12 years. 00:12:32.879 --> 00:12:36.035 And you see there a happy five-month-old, 00:12:36.789 --> 00:12:41.856 a five-month little boy who is going to watch things 00:12:41.880 --> 00:12:43.792 that are brought from his world: 00:12:44.596 --> 00:12:46.829 his mom, the caregiver, 00:12:46.853 --> 00:12:51.083 but also experiences that he would have were he to be in his daycare. 00:12:51.884 --> 00:12:55.724 What we want is to embrace that world and bring it into our laboratory, 00:12:55.748 --> 00:12:57.782 but in order for us to do that, 00:12:57.806 --> 00:13:02.061 we had to create these very sophisticated measures, 00:13:02.085 --> 00:13:05.566 measures of how people, how little babies, 00:13:05.590 --> 00:13:10.104 how newborns, engage with the world, moment by moment. 00:13:10.128 --> 00:13:12.413 What is important and what is not. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:13.163 --> 00:13:15.774 Well, we created those measures, 00:13:15.798 --> 00:13:19.159 and here, what you see is what we call a funnel of attention. 00:13:19.826 --> 00:13:21.191 You're watching a video -- 00:13:21.739 --> 00:13:24.470 those frames are separated by about a second -- 00:13:24.494 --> 00:13:28.366 through the eyes of 35 typically developing two-year-olds. 00:13:28.837 --> 00:13:31.134 And we freeze one frame, 00:13:31.908 --> 00:13:34.996 and this is what the typical children are doing. 00:13:35.020 --> 00:13:39.437 In this scan pass, in green here, are two-year-olds with autism. 00:13:39.461 --> 00:13:44.824 So on that frame, the children who are typical are watching this, 00:13:46.039 --> 00:13:48.564 the emotion of expression of that little boy 00:13:48.588 --> 00:13:51.314 as he's fighting a little bit with the little girl. 00:13:51.338 --> 00:13:53.375 What are the children with autism doing? 00:13:53.399 --> 00:13:56.494 They are focusing on the revolving door, 00:13:57.304 --> 00:13:58.725 opening and shutting. 00:13:59.542 --> 00:14:02.891 Well, I can tell you that this divergence that you're seeing here 00:14:02.915 --> 00:14:05.727 doesn't happen only in our five-minute experiment. 00:14:05.751 --> 00:14:08.685 It happens moment by moment in their real lives, 00:14:09.820 --> 00:14:14.053 and their minds are being formed and their brains are being specialized 00:14:14.077 --> 00:14:18.100 in something other than what is happening with their typical peers. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:18.807 --> 00:14:25.326 Well, we took a construct from our pediatrician friends, 00:14:25.350 --> 00:14:26.869 the concept of growth charts -- 00:14:26.893 --> 00:14:29.370 you know, when you take a child to the pediatrician, 00:14:29.394 --> 00:14:32.476 and you have physical height and weight. 00:14:33.066 --> 00:14:36.000 Well, we decided we were going to create growth charts 00:14:36.024 --> 00:14:37.325 of social engagement. 00:14:38.354 --> 00:14:41.122 We sought children from the time they're born. 00:14:41.574 --> 00:14:44.949 What you see here on the x-axis 00:14:44.973 --> 00:14:49.158 is two, three, four, five, six months and nine, 00:14:49.182 --> 00:14:50.945 until about the age of 24 months. 00:14:50.969 --> 00:14:53.740 This is the percent of their viewing time 00:14:53.764 --> 00:14:55.675 that they're focusing on people's eyes, 00:14:55.699 --> 00:14:57.628 and this is their growth chart. 00:14:58.144 --> 00:15:00.617 They start over here -- they love people's eyes -- 00:15:00.641 --> 00:15:02.684 and it remains quite stable. 00:15:03.350 --> 00:15:06.613 It sort of goes up a little bit in those initial months. 00:15:07.319 --> 00:15:11.056 Now, let's see what's happening with babies who became autistic. 00:15:11.771 --> 00:15:13.263 It's something very different. 00:15:14.004 --> 00:15:16.934 It starts way up here, but then it's a free fall. 00:15:17.799 --> 00:15:21.670 It's very much like they brought into this world the reflex 00:15:21.694 --> 00:15:24.887 that orients them to people, but it has no traction. 00:15:25.511 --> 00:15:27.945 It's almost as if that stimulus -- you -- 00:15:28.540 --> 00:15:31.530 you're not exerting influence on what happens 00:15:31.554 --> 00:15:33.908 as they navigate their daily lives. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:35.236 --> 00:15:41.996 Now, we thought those data were so powerful, in a way, 00:15:42.686 --> 00:15:45.936 that we wanted to see what happened in the first six months of life, 00:15:45.960 --> 00:15:49.168 because if you interact with a two- and a three-month-old, 00:15:49.192 --> 00:15:52.442 you'd be surprised by how social those babies are. 00:15:53.513 --> 00:15:56.370 And what we see in the first six months of life 00:15:56.394 --> 00:16:01.271 is that those two groups can be segregated very easily. 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:05.276 And using these kinds of measures and many others, 00:16:05.300 --> 00:16:08.953 what we found out is that our science could, in fact, 00:16:08.977 --> 00:16:11.201 identify this condition early on. 00:16:11.749 --> 00:16:14.910 We didn't have to wait for the behaviors of autism 00:16:14.934 --> 00:16:17.013 to emerge in the second year of life. 00:16:18.156 --> 00:16:22.683 If we measured things that are, evolutionarily, highly conserved, 00:16:22.707 --> 00:16:25.030 and developmentally very early-emerging -- 00:16:25.054 --> 00:16:27.731 things that are online from the first weeks of life -- 00:16:27.755 --> 00:16:29.717 we could push the detection of autism 00:16:29.741 --> 00:16:32.269 all the way to those first months, 00:16:32.293 --> 00:16:34.277 and that's what we are doing now. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:36.618 --> 00:16:39.775 Now, we can create the very best technologies 00:16:39.799 --> 00:16:42.805 and the very best methods to identify the children, 00:16:43.591 --> 00:16:46.505 but this would be for naught if we didn't have an impact 00:16:46.529 --> 00:16:49.209 on what happens in their reality in the community. 00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:51.962 Now we want those devices, of course, 00:16:51.986 --> 00:16:54.815 to be deployed by those who are in the trenches -- 00:16:54.839 --> 00:16:59.377 our colleagues, the primary care physicians, who see every child -- 00:17:00.067 --> 00:17:02.430 and we need to transform those technologies 00:17:02.454 --> 00:17:05.456 into something that is going to add value to their practice, 00:17:05.480 --> 00:17:07.666 because they have to see so many children. 00:17:07.690 --> 00:17:11.767 And we want to do that universally so that we don't miss any child. 00:17:11.791 --> 00:17:13.402 But this would be immoral 00:17:14.529 --> 00:17:19.892 if we also did not have an infrastructure for intervention, for treatment. 00:17:20.487 --> 00:17:24.379 We need to be able to work with the families, support the families, 00:17:24.403 --> 00:17:27.416 to manage those first years with them. 00:17:28.384 --> 00:17:30.782 We need to be able to really go 00:17:30.806 --> 00:17:34.728 from universal screening to universal access to treatment, 00:17:34.752 --> 00:17:37.741 because those treatments are going to change 00:17:37.765 --> 00:17:40.630 these children's and those families' lives. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:42.450 --> 00:17:48.888 Now, when we think about what we [can] do in those first years, 00:17:48.912 --> 00:17:53.482 I can tell you, having been in this field for so long, 00:17:54.077 --> 00:17:56.453 one feels really rejuvenated. 00:17:56.832 --> 00:18:01.554 There is a sense that the science that one worked on 00:18:01.578 --> 00:18:04.347 can actually have an impact on realities, 00:18:04.371 --> 00:18:07.351 preventing, in fact, those experiences 00:18:07.972 --> 00:18:10.716 that I really started in my journey in this field. 00:18:11.343 --> 00:18:14.753 I thought at the time that this was an intractable condition. 00:18:14.777 --> 00:18:18.056 No longer. We can do a great deal of things. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:18.707 --> 00:18:21.116 And the idea is not to cure autism. 00:18:21.140 --> 00:18:22.640 That's not the idea. 00:18:23.791 --> 00:18:25.865 What we want is to make sure 00:18:25.889 --> 00:18:28.441 that those individuals with autism can be free 00:18:28.465 --> 00:18:32.080 from the devastating consequences that come with it at times, 00:18:32.876 --> 00:18:35.937 the profound intellectual disabilities, the lack of language, 00:18:35.961 --> 00:18:38.448 the profound, profound isolation. 00:18:39.563 --> 00:18:41.809 We feel that individuals with autism, in fact, 00:18:41.833 --> 00:18:44.299 have a very special perspective on the world, 00:18:44.323 --> 00:18:45.669 and we need diversity. 00:18:46.440 --> 00:18:50.066 And they can work extremely well in some areas of strength: 00:18:50.090 --> 00:18:53.469 predictable situations, situations that can be defined. 00:18:53.493 --> 00:18:56.451 Because after all, they learn about the world 00:18:56.475 --> 00:18:58.357 almost, like, about it, 00:18:58.381 --> 00:19:01.178 rather than learning how to function in it. 00:19:01.202 --> 00:19:05.201 But this is a strength if you're working, for example, in technology. 00:19:06.081 --> 00:19:09.912 And there are those individuals who have incredible artistic abilities. 00:19:09.936 --> 00:19:12.269 We want them to be free to do that. 00:19:12.293 --> 00:19:15.412 We want that the next generations of individuals with autism 00:19:15.436 --> 00:19:18.514 will be able not only to express their strengths, 00:19:18.538 --> 00:19:20.437 but to fulfill their promise. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:20.952 --> 00:19:22.699 Well, thank you for listening to me. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:22.723 --> 00:19:24.501 (Applause)