WEBVTT 00:00:01.119 --> 00:00:03.027 I always wanted to become 00:00:03.027 --> 00:00:05.867 a walking laboratory of social engagement, 00:00:05.867 --> 00:00:09.943 to resonate other people's feelings, thoughts, 00:00:09.943 --> 00:00:14.999 intentions, motivations, in the act of being with them. 00:00:14.999 --> 00:00:20.878 As a scientist, I always wanted to measure that resonance, 00:00:20.879 --> 00:00:23.377 that sense of the other that happens so quickly, 00:00:23.377 --> 00:00:25.682 in the blink of an eye. 00:00:25.682 --> 00:00:28.032 We intuit other people's feelings. 00:00:28.032 --> 00:00:29.019 We know the meaning of their actions 00:00:29.019 --> 00:00:31.959 even before they happen. 00:00:31.959 --> 00:00:33.857 We're always in this stance of being 00:00:33.857 --> 00:00:36.828 the object of somebody else's subjectivity. 00:00:36.828 --> 00:00:40.025 We do that all the time. We just can't shake it off. 00:00:40.025 --> 00:00:41.676 It's so important that the very tools that we use 00:00:41.676 --> 00:00:44.079 to understand ourselves, to understand 00:00:44.079 --> 00:00:48.226 the world around them, is shaped by that stance. 00:00:48.226 --> 00:00:51.460 We are social to the core. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:51.460 --> 00:00:54.234 So my journey in autism really started when I lived 00:00:54.234 --> 00:00:57.811 in a residential unit for adults with autism. 00:00:57.811 --> 00:01:01.129 Most of those individuals had spent most of their lives 00:01:01.129 --> 00:01:05.021 in long-stay hospitals. This is a long time ago. 00:01:05.021 --> 00:01:09.303 And for them, autism was devastating. 00:01:09.303 --> 00:01:12.558 They had profound intellectual disabilities. 00:01:12.558 --> 00:01:15.860 They didn't talk. But most of all, 00:01:15.860 --> 00:01:19.690 they were extraordinarily isolated 00:01:19.690 --> 00:01:22.931 from the world around them, from their environment 00:01:22.931 --> 00:01:25.392 and from the people. 00:01:25.392 --> 00:01:28.244 In fact, at the time, if you walked into a school 00:01:28.244 --> 00:01:32.267 for individuals with autism, you'd hear a lot of noise, 00:01:32.267 --> 00:01:37.730 plenty of commotion, actions, people doing things, 00:01:37.730 --> 00:01:41.455 but they're always doing things by themselves. 00:01:41.455 --> 00:01:45.527 So they may be looking at a light in the ceiling, 00:01:45.527 --> 00:01:48.936 or they may be isolated in the corner, 00:01:48.936 --> 00:01:52.495 or they might be engaged in these repetitive movements, 00:01:52.495 --> 00:01:56.696 in self-stimulatory movements that led them nowhere. 00:01:56.696 --> 00:02:00.095 Extremely, extremely isolated. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:00.095 --> 00:02:03.688 Well, now we know that autism 00:02:03.688 --> 00:02:07.426 is this disruption, the disruption of this resonance 00:02:07.426 --> 00:02:09.770 that I am telling you. 00:02:09.770 --> 00:02:11.728 These are survival skills. 00:02:11.728 --> 00:02:13.879 These are survival skills that we inherited 00:02:13.879 --> 00:02:16.433 over many, many hundreds of thousands of years 00:02:16.433 --> 00:02:18.719 of evolution. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:18.719 --> 00:02:24.033 You see, babies are born in a state of utter fragility. 00:02:24.033 --> 00:02:26.064 Without the caregiver, they wouldn't survive, so it stands 00:02:26.064 --> 00:02:28.447 to reason that nature would endow them with 00:02:28.447 --> 00:02:31.680 these mechanisms of survival. 00:02:31.680 --> 00:02:34.255 They orient to the caregiver. 00:02:34.255 --> 00:02:37.697 From the first days and weeks of life, 00:02:37.697 --> 00:02:41.183 babies prefer to hear human sounds rather than just 00:02:41.183 --> 00:02:43.128 sounds in the environment. 00:02:43.128 --> 00:02:45.138 They prefer to look at people rather than at things, 00:02:45.138 --> 00:02:47.183 and even as they're looking at people, 00:02:47.183 --> 00:02:49.747 they look at people's eyes, because 00:02:49.747 --> 00:02:54.096 the eye is the window to the other person's experiences, 00:02:54.096 --> 00:02:56.214 so much so that they even prefer to look at people who are 00:02:56.214 --> 00:03:00.525 looking at them rather than people who are looking away. 00:03:00.525 --> 00:03:03.131 Well, they orient to the caregiver. 00:03:03.131 --> 00:03:05.458 The caregiver seeks the baby. 00:03:05.458 --> 00:03:09.085 And it's out of this mutually reinforcing choreography 00:03:09.085 --> 00:03:12.904 that a lot that is of importance to the emergence of mind, 00:03:12.904 --> 00:03:17.587 the social mind, the social brain, depends on. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:17.587 --> 00:03:20.268 We always think about autism 00:03:20.268 --> 00:03:25.347 as something that happens later on in life. 00:03:25.347 --> 00:03:30.745 It doesn't. It begins with the beginning of life. 00:03:30.745 --> 00:03:35.049 As babies engage with caregivers, they soon realize 00:03:35.049 --> 00:03:39.256 that, well, there is something in between the ears 00:03:39.256 --> 00:03:40.666 that is very important -- 00:03:40.666 --> 00:03:44.849 it's invisible, you can't see -- but is really critical, 00:03:44.849 --> 00:03:46.308 and that thing is called attention. 00:03:46.308 --> 00:03:49.138 And they learn soon enough, even before they can 00:03:49.138 --> 00:03:51.818 utter one word that they can take that attention 00:03:51.818 --> 00:03:57.555 and move somewhere in order to get things they want. 00:03:57.555 --> 00:04:00.679 They also learn to follow other people's gaze, 00:04:00.679 --> 00:04:02.949 because whatever people are looking at is 00:04:02.949 --> 00:04:06.704 what they are thinking about. 00:04:06.704 --> 00:04:09.346 And soon enough, they start to learn about the meaning 00:04:09.346 --> 00:04:12.771 of things, because when somebody is looking at something 00:04:12.771 --> 00:04:14.823 or somebody is pointing at something, 00:04:14.823 --> 00:04:17.752 they're not just getting a directional cue, 00:04:17.752 --> 00:04:20.310 they are getting the other person's meaning 00:04:20.310 --> 00:04:23.389 of that thing, the attitude, and soon enough 00:04:23.389 --> 00:04:27.488 they start building this body of meanings, 00:04:27.488 --> 00:04:29.801 but meanings that were acquired within the realm 00:04:29.801 --> 00:04:32.202 of social interaction. 00:04:32.202 --> 00:04:34.043 Those are meanings that are acquired as part 00:04:34.043 --> 00:04:38.030 of their shared experiences with others. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:38.030 --> 00:04:44.862 Well, this is a little 15-month-old little girl, 00:04:44.862 --> 00:04:48.594 and she has autism. 00:04:48.594 --> 00:04:52.016 And I am coming so close to her that I am maybe 00:04:52.016 --> 00:04:56.265 two inches from her face, and she's quite oblivious to me. 00:04:56.265 --> 00:04:57.623 Imagine if I did that to you, 00:04:57.623 --> 00:04:59.549 and I came two inches from your face. 00:04:59.549 --> 00:05:01.655 You'd do probably two things, wouldn't you? 00:05:01.655 --> 00:05:05.767 You would recoil. You would call the police. (Laughter) 00:05:05.767 --> 00:05:08.316 You would do something, because it's literally impossible 00:05:08.316 --> 00:05:10.892 to penetrate somebody's physical space 00:05:10.892 --> 00:05:12.247 and not get a reaction. 00:05:12.247 --> 00:05:15.931 We do so, remember, intuitively, effortlessly. 00:05:15.931 --> 00:05:17.348 This is our body wisdom. It's not something that is 00:05:17.348 --> 00:05:21.898 mediated by our language. Our body just knows that, 00:05:21.898 --> 00:05:24.661 and we've known that for a long time. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:24.661 --> 00:05:27.600 And this is not something that happens to humans only. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:30.824 It happens to some of our phylatic cousins, 00:05:30.824 --> 00:05:32.818 because if you're a monkey, 00:05:32.818 --> 00:05:34.914 and you look at another monkey, 00:05:34.914 --> 00:05:38.932 and that monkey has a higher hierarchy position than you, 00:05:38.932 --> 00:05:42.485 and that is considered to be a signal or threat, 00:05:42.485 --> 00:05:45.365 well, you are not going to be alive for long. 00:05:45.365 --> 00:05:49.786 So something that in other species are survival mechanisms, 00:05:49.786 --> 00:05:53.207 without them they wouldn't basically live, 00:05:53.207 --> 00:05:55.907 we bring into the context of human beings, 00:05:55.907 --> 00:06:00.070 and this is what we need to simply act, act socially. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:00.070 --> 00:06:02.973 Now, she is oblivious to me, and I am so close to her, 00:06:02.973 --> 00:06:04.971 and you think, maybe she can see you, 00:06:04.971 --> 00:06:06.591 maybe she can hear you. 00:06:06.591 --> 00:06:08.931 Well, a few minutes later, she goes to the corner of 00:06:08.931 --> 00:06:14.530 the room, and she finds a tiny little piece of candy, an M&M. 00:06:14.530 --> 00:06:19.400 So I could not attract her attention, 00:06:19.400 --> 00:06:21.829 but something, a thing, did. 00:06:21.829 --> 00:06:24.471 Now, most of us make a big dichotomy 00:06:24.471 --> 00:06:28.806 between the world of things and the world of people. 00:06:28.806 --> 00:06:33.397 Now, for this girl, that division line is not so clear, 00:06:33.397 --> 00:06:36.527 and the world of people is not attracting her 00:06:36.527 --> 00:06:38.010 as much as we would like. 00:06:38.010 --> 00:06:40.044 Now remember that we learn a great deal 00:06:40.044 --> 00:06:42.445 by sharing experiences. 00:06:42.445 --> 00:06:45.616 Now, what she is doing right now is that 00:06:45.616 --> 00:06:50.095 her path of learning is diverging moment by moment 00:06:50.095 --> 00:06:53.913 as she is isolating herself further and further. 00:06:53.913 --> 00:06:56.879 So we feel sometimes that the brain is deterministic, 00:06:56.879 --> 00:06:59.401 the brain determines who we are going to be. 00:06:59.401 --> 00:07:02.241 But in fact the brain also becomes who we are, 00:07:02.241 --> 00:07:06.254 and at the same time that her behaviors are taking away 00:07:06.254 --> 00:07:09.137 from the realm of social interaction, this is what's happening 00:07:09.137 --> 00:07:14.529 with her mind and this is what's happening with her brain. NOTE Paragraph 00:07:14.529 --> 00:07:20.367 Well, autism is the most strongly genetic condition 00:07:20.367 --> 00:07:23.820 of all developmental disorders, 00:07:23.820 --> 00:07:26.695 and it's a brain disorder. 00:07:26.695 --> 00:07:29.304 It's a disorder that begins much prior to the time 00:07:29.304 --> 00:07:32.170 that the child is born. 00:07:32.170 --> 00:07:35.884 We now know that there is a very broad spectrum of autism. 00:07:35.884 --> 00:07:38.396 There are those individuals who are profoundly 00:07:38.396 --> 00:07:41.394 intellectually disabled, but there are those that are gifted. 00:07:41.394 --> 00:07:43.522 There are those individuals who don't talk at all. 00:07:43.522 --> 00:07:45.794 There are those individuals who talk too much. 00:07:45.794 --> 00:07:48.295 There are those individuals that if you observe them 00:07:48.295 --> 00:07:51.304 in their school, you see them running the periphery fence 00:07:51.304 --> 00:07:53.603 of the school all day if you let them, 00:07:53.603 --> 00:07:55.961 to those individuals who cannot stop coming to you 00:07:55.961 --> 00:07:57.966 and trying to engage you repeatedly, relentlessly, 00:07:57.966 --> 00:08:01.897 but often in an awkward fashion, 00:08:01.897 --> 00:08:05.672 without that immediate resonance. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:05.672 --> 00:08:09.604 Well, this is much more prevalent than we thought at the time. 00:08:09.604 --> 00:08:11.088 When I started in this field, we thought that there were 00:08:11.088 --> 00:08:13.941 four individuals with autism per 10,000, 00:08:13.941 --> 00:08:15.972 a very rare condition. 00:08:15.972 --> 00:08:20.005 Well, now we know it's more like one in 100. 00:08:20.005 --> 00:08:25.028 There are millions of individuals with autism all around us. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:25.028 --> 00:08:28.394 The societal cost of this condition is huge. 00:08:28.394 --> 00:08:31.557 In the U.S. alone, maybe 35 to 80 billion dollars, 00:08:31.557 --> 00:08:34.864 and you know what? Most of those funds are associated 00:08:34.864 --> 00:08:37.044 with adolescents and particularly adults 00:08:37.044 --> 00:08:39.205 who are several disabled, 00:08:39.205 --> 00:08:41.344 individuals who need wrap-around services, services 00:08:41.344 --> 00:08:44.070 that are very, very intensive, and those services 00:08:44.070 --> 00:08:48.339 can cost in excess of 60 to 80,000 dollars a year. 00:08:48.339 --> 00:08:51.901 Those are individuals who did not benefit from early treatment, 00:08:51.901 --> 00:08:56.360 because now we know that autism creates itself 00:08:56.360 --> 00:08:59.064 as they diverge in that pathway of learning 00:08:59.064 --> 00:09:01.200 that I mentioned to you. 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:03.613 Were we to be able to identify this condition 00:09:03.613 --> 00:09:07.680 at an earlier point, and intervene and treat, 00:09:07.680 --> 00:09:09.654 I can tell you, and this has been probably 00:09:09.654 --> 00:09:13.034 something that has changed my life in the past 10 years, 00:09:13.034 --> 00:09:16.765 this notion that we can absolutely attenuate 00:09:16.765 --> 00:09:18.922 this condition. 00:09:18.922 --> 00:09:21.301 Also, we have a window of opportunity, because 00:09:21.301 --> 00:09:24.437 the brain is malleable for just so long, 00:09:24.437 --> 00:09:25.789 and that window of opportunity happens 00:09:25.789 --> 00:09:27.492 in the first three years of life. 00:09:27.492 --> 00:09:30.890 It's not that that window closes. It doesn't. 00:09:30.890 --> 00:09:34.459 But it diminishes considerably. 00:09:34.459 --> 00:09:37.563 And yet, the median age of diagnosis in this country 00:09:37.563 --> 00:09:39.714 is still about five years, 00:09:39.714 --> 00:09:41.980 and in disadvantaged populations, 00:09:41.980 --> 00:09:45.229 the populations that don't have access to clinical services, 00:09:45.229 --> 00:09:48.338 rural populations, minorities, 00:09:48.338 --> 00:09:50.957 the age of diagnosis is later still, 00:09:50.957 --> 00:09:53.302 which is almost as if I were to tell you that we are 00:09:53.302 --> 00:09:55.719 condemning those communities to have individuals 00:09:55.719 --> 00:10:00.195 with autism whose condition is going to be more severe. 00:10:00.195 --> 00:10:03.168 So I feel that we have a bio-ethical imperative. 00:10:03.168 --> 00:10:06.025 The science is there, 00:10:06.025 --> 00:10:09.083 but no science is of relevance if it doesn't have an impact 00:10:09.083 --> 00:10:12.741 on the community, and we just can't afford 00:10:12.741 --> 00:10:14.705 that missed opportunity, 00:10:14.705 --> 00:10:17.861 because children with autism become adults with autism, 00:10:17.861 --> 00:10:22.139 and we feel that those things that we can do 00:10:22.139 --> 00:10:24.462 for these children, for those families, early on, 00:10:24.462 --> 00:10:26.856 will have lifetime consequences, 00:10:26.856 --> 00:10:30.952 for the child, for the family, and for the community at large. 00:10:30.952 --> 00:10:33.672 So this is our view of autism. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:33.672 --> 00:10:36.538 There are over a hundred genes that are associated 00:10:36.538 --> 00:10:38.664 with autism. In fact, we believe that there are going to be 00:10:38.664 --> 00:10:43.168 something between 300 and 600 genes associated with autism, 00:10:43.168 --> 00:10:46.839 and genetic anomalies, much more than just genes. 00:10:46.839 --> 00:10:51.430 And we actually have a bit of a question here, 00:10:51.430 --> 00:10:54.915 because if there are so many different causes of autism, 00:10:54.915 --> 00:10:57.930 how do you go from those liabilities 00:10:57.930 --> 00:11:00.930 to the actual syndrome? Because people like myself, 00:11:00.930 --> 00:11:03.615 when we walk into a playroom, 00:11:03.615 --> 00:11:06.835 we recognize a child as having autism. 00:11:06.835 --> 00:11:08.978 So how do you go from multiple causes 00:11:08.978 --> 00:11:12.428 to a syndrome that has some homogeneity? 00:11:12.428 --> 00:11:15.005 And the answer is, what lies in between, 00:11:15.005 --> 00:11:17.660 which is development. 00:11:17.660 --> 00:11:20.776 And in fact, we are very interested in those first 00:11:20.776 --> 00:11:23.515 two years of life, because those liabilities 00:11:23.515 --> 00:11:26.269 don't necessarily convert into autism. 00:11:26.269 --> 00:11:28.765 Autism creates itself. 00:11:28.765 --> 00:11:33.614 Were we to be able to intervene during those years of life, 00:11:33.614 --> 00:11:36.117 we might attenuate for some, and God knows, 00:11:36.117 --> 00:11:39.753 maybe even prevent for others. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:39.753 --> 00:11:41.837 So how do we do that? 00:11:41.837 --> 00:11:44.753 How do we enter that feeling of resonance, 00:11:44.753 --> 00:11:48.778 how do we enter another person's being? 00:11:48.778 --> 00:11:52.276 I remember when I interacted with that 15-month-older, 00:11:52.276 --> 00:11:54.438 that the thing that came to mind was, 00:11:54.438 --> 00:11:56.953 "How do you come into her world? 00:11:56.953 --> 00:12:01.233 Is she thinking about me? Is she thinking about others?" 00:12:01.233 --> 00:12:05.577 Well, it's hard to do that, so we had to create 00:12:05.577 --> 00:12:09.056 the technologies. We had to basically step inside a body. 00:12:09.056 --> 00:12:12.985 We had to see the world through her eyes. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:12.985 --> 00:12:16.024 And so in the past many years we've been building 00:12:16.024 --> 00:12:19.657 these new technologies that are based on eye tracking. 00:12:19.657 --> 00:12:22.175 We can see moment by moment 00:12:22.175 --> 00:12:25.456 what children are engaging with. 00:12:25.456 --> 00:12:28.175 Well, this is my colleague Warren Jones, with whom 00:12:28.175 --> 00:12:31.152 we've been building these methods, these studies, 00:12:31.152 --> 00:12:33.143 for the past 12 years, 00:12:33.143 --> 00:12:35.863 and you see there a happy five-month-older, 00:12:35.863 --> 00:12:41.686 it's a five-month little boy who is going to watch things 00:12:41.686 --> 00:12:44.509 that are brought from his world, 00:12:44.509 --> 00:12:47.088 his mom, the caregiver, but also experiences 00:12:47.088 --> 00:12:51.520 that he would have were he to be in his daycare. 00:12:51.520 --> 00:12:54.152 What we want is to embrace that world 00:12:54.152 --> 00:12:55.481 and bring it into our laboratory, 00:12:55.481 --> 00:12:58.603 but in order for us to do that, we had to create 00:12:58.603 --> 00:13:01.853 these very sophisticated measures, 00:13:01.853 --> 00:13:05.280 measures of how people, how little babies, 00:13:05.280 --> 00:13:08.263 how newborns, engage with the world, 00:13:08.263 --> 00:13:09.890 moment by moment, 00:13:09.890 --> 00:13:13.163 what is important, and what is not. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:13.163 --> 00:13:16.104 Well, we created those measures, and here, 00:13:16.104 --> 00:13:19.503 what you see is what we call a funnel of attention. 00:13:19.503 --> 00:13:21.836 You're watching a video. 00:13:21.836 --> 00:13:24.494 Those frames are separated by about a second 00:13:24.494 --> 00:13:27.262 through the eyes of 35 typically developing 00:13:27.262 --> 00:13:28.544 two-year-olds, 00:13:28.544 --> 00:13:31.519 and we freeze one frame, 00:13:31.519 --> 00:13:35.020 and this is what the typical children are doing. 00:13:35.020 --> 00:13:39.461 In this scan pass, in green here, are two-year-olds with autism. 00:13:39.461 --> 00:13:43.084 So on that frame, the children who are typical 00:13:43.084 --> 00:13:46.039 are watching this, 00:13:46.039 --> 00:13:48.588 the emotion of expression of that little boy 00:13:48.588 --> 00:13:51.498 as he's fighting a little bit with the little girl. 00:13:51.498 --> 00:13:53.558 What are the children with autism doing? 00:13:53.558 --> 00:13:57.003 They are focusing on the revolving door, 00:13:57.003 --> 00:13:59.094 opening and shutting. 00:13:59.094 --> 00:14:01.546 Well, I can tell you that this divergence 00:14:01.546 --> 00:14:02.415 that you're seeing here 00:14:02.415 --> 00:14:05.605 doesn't happen only in our five-minute experiment. 00:14:05.605 --> 00:14:09.006 It happens moment by moment in their real lives, 00:14:09.006 --> 00:14:11.726 and their minds are being formed, 00:14:11.726 --> 00:14:14.806 and their brains are being specialized in something other 00:14:14.806 --> 00:14:18.585 than what is happening with their typical peers. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:18.585 --> 00:14:21.772 Well, we took a construct from 00:14:21.772 --> 00:14:24.966 our pediatrician friends, 00:14:24.966 --> 00:14:26.893 the concept of growth charts. 00:14:26.893 --> 00:14:28.862 You know, when you take a child to the pediatrician, 00:14:28.862 --> 00:14:33.066 and so you have physical height, and weight. 00:14:33.066 --> 00:14:35.895 Well we decided that we're going to create growth charts 00:14:35.895 --> 00:14:38.354 of social engagement, 00:14:38.354 --> 00:14:41.155 and we sought children from the time that they are born, 00:14:41.155 --> 00:14:46.984 and what you see here on the x-axis is two, three, four, 00:14:46.984 --> 00:14:50.824 five, six months and nine, until about the age of 24 months, 00:14:50.824 --> 00:14:53.555 and this is the percent of their viewing time 00:14:53.555 --> 00:14:55.251 that they are focusing on people's eyes, 00:14:55.251 --> 00:14:57.611 and this is their growth chart. 00:14:57.611 --> 00:15:00.641 They start over here, they love people's eyes, 00:15:00.641 --> 00:15:03.095 and it remains quite stable. 00:15:03.095 --> 00:15:07.021 It sort of goes up a little bit in those initial months. 00:15:07.021 --> 00:15:09.315 Now, let's see what's happening with babies 00:15:09.315 --> 00:15:11.823 who became autistic. 00:15:11.823 --> 00:15:14.028 It's something very different. 00:15:14.028 --> 00:15:17.818 It starts way up here, but then it's a free fall. 00:15:17.818 --> 00:15:21.237 It's very much like they brought into this world the reflex 00:15:21.237 --> 00:15:25.168 that orients them to people, but it has no traction. 00:15:25.168 --> 00:15:28.238 It's almost as if that stimulus, you, 00:15:28.238 --> 00:15:31.139 you're not exerting influence on what happens 00:15:31.139 --> 00:15:35.030 as they navigate their daily lives. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:35.030 --> 00:15:41.052 Now, we thought that those data were so powerful 00:15:41.052 --> 00:15:44.060 in a way, that we wanted to see what happened 00:15:44.060 --> 00:15:47.453 in the first six months of life, because if you interact 00:15:47.453 --> 00:15:48.790 with a two- and a three-month-older, 00:15:48.790 --> 00:15:53.342 you'd be surprised by how social those babies are. 00:15:53.342 --> 00:15:55.949 And what we see in the first six months of life 00:15:55.949 --> 00:16:02.087 is that those two groups can be segregated very easily. 00:16:02.087 --> 00:16:04.961 And using these kinds of measures, and many others, 00:16:04.961 --> 00:16:08.977 what we found out is that our science could, in fact, 00:16:08.977 --> 00:16:11.618 identify this condition early on. 00:16:11.618 --> 00:16:14.522 We didn't have to wait for the behaviors of autism 00:16:14.522 --> 00:16:17.670 to emerge in the second year of life. 00:16:17.670 --> 00:16:20.932 If we measured things that are, evolutionarily, 00:16:20.932 --> 00:16:25.054 highly conserved, and developmentally very early emerging, 00:16:25.054 --> 00:16:27.755 things that are online from the first weeks of life, 00:16:27.755 --> 00:16:29.617 we could push the detection of autism 00:16:29.617 --> 00:16:32.081 all the way to those first months, 00:16:32.081 --> 00:16:36.222 and that's what we are doing now. NOTE Paragraph 00:16:36.222 --> 00:16:39.290 Now, we can create the very best technologies 00:16:39.290 --> 00:16:42.895 and the very best methods to identify the children, 00:16:42.895 --> 00:16:46.038 but this would be for naught if we didn't have an impact 00:16:46.038 --> 00:16:49.680 on what happens in their reality in the community. 00:16:49.680 --> 00:16:51.986 Now we want those devices, of course, 00:16:51.986 --> 00:16:54.839 to be deployed by those who are in the trenches, 00:16:54.839 --> 00:16:57.362 our colleagues, the primary care physicians, 00:16:57.362 --> 00:17:00.067 who see every child, 00:17:00.067 --> 00:17:02.210 and we need to transform those technologies 00:17:02.210 --> 00:17:05.315 into something that is going to add value to their practice, 00:17:05.315 --> 00:17:07.520 because they have to see so many children. 00:17:07.520 --> 00:17:09.594 And we want to do that universally 00:17:09.594 --> 00:17:11.727 so that we don't miss any child, 00:17:11.727 --> 00:17:14.180 but this would be immoral 00:17:14.180 --> 00:17:19.081 if we also did not have an infrastructure for intervention, 00:17:19.081 --> 00:17:20.328 for treatment. 00:17:20.328 --> 00:17:22.864 We need to be able to work with the families, 00:17:22.864 --> 00:17:26.279 to support the families, to manage those first years 00:17:26.279 --> 00:17:30.191 with them. We need to be able to really go 00:17:30.191 --> 00:17:34.348 from universal screening to universal access to treatment, 00:17:34.348 --> 00:17:37.451 because those treatments are going to change 00:17:37.451 --> 00:17:41.030 these children's and those families' lives. NOTE Paragraph 00:17:41.030 --> 00:17:45.287 Now, when we think about what we [can] do 00:17:45.287 --> 00:17:48.510 in those first years, 00:17:48.510 --> 00:17:50.910 I can tell you, 00:17:50.910 --> 00:17:53.737 having been in this field for so long, 00:17:53.737 --> 00:17:56.832 one feels really rejuvenated. 00:17:56.832 --> 00:18:00.664 There is a sense that the science that one worked on 00:18:00.664 --> 00:18:04.371 can actually have an impact on realities, 00:18:04.371 --> 00:18:07.266 preventing, in fact, those experiences 00:18:07.266 --> 00:18:11.268 that I really started in my journey in this field. 00:18:11.268 --> 00:18:14.460 I thought at the time that this was an intractable condition. 00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:18.346 No longer. We can do a great deal of things. NOTE Paragraph 00:18:18.346 --> 00:18:21.083 And the idea is not to cure autism. 00:18:21.083 --> 00:18:23.683 That's not the idea. 00:18:23.683 --> 00:18:25.889 What we want is to make sure 00:18:25.889 --> 00:18:28.465 that those individuals with autism can be free from 00:18:28.465 --> 00:18:32.695 the devastating consequences that come with it at times, 00:18:32.695 --> 00:18:35.569 the profound intellectual disabilities, the lack of language, 00:18:35.569 --> 00:18:39.238 the profound, profound isolation. 00:18:39.238 --> 00:18:41.505 We feel that individuals with autism, in fact, 00:18:41.505 --> 00:18:44.300 have a very special perspective on the world, 00:18:44.300 --> 00:18:47.723 and we need diversity, and they can work extremely well 00:18:47.723 --> 00:18:50.090 in some areas of strength: 00:18:50.090 --> 00:18:53.493 predictable situations, situations that can be defined. 00:18:53.493 --> 00:18:56.502 Because after all, they learn about the world almost like 00:18:56.502 --> 00:19:01.203 about it, rather than learning how to function in it. 00:19:01.203 --> 00:19:04.001 But this is a strength, if you're working, for example, 00:19:04.001 --> 00:19:06.081 in technology. 00:19:06.081 --> 00:19:08.354 And there are those individuals who have incredible 00:19:08.354 --> 00:19:09.779 artistic abilities. 00:19:09.779 --> 00:19:11.699 We want them to be free of that. 00:19:11.699 --> 00:19:15.084 We want that the next generations of individuals with autism 00:19:15.084 --> 00:19:18.239 will be able not only to express their strengths 00:19:18.239 --> 00:19:20.461 but to fulfill their promise. NOTE Paragraph 00:19:20.461 --> 00:19:24.030 Well thank you for listening to me. (Applause)