One of the most exciting stories in neuroscience in the last decade is the idea of neuroplasticity - the concept that the brain continues to grow, add new cells and change throughout life. There have been amazing breakthroughs in the treatment of stroke and dyslexia through neural retraining. Using specialized education techniques, the brain may be able to rewire around damaged or undeveloped areas and re-regulate the way it deals with sensory input. Cure Autism Now is interested in bringing these techniques to bear on autism to find non-pharmacological ways to retrain the brains of the very young and those most affected by autism that in many instances are not able to speak at all.

The initiative began with a Genius Award to Dr. Michael Merzenich from the University of California, San Francisco who is a leader in this field and the developer of Fast ForWord - a family of programs that has been very effective in helping those with dyslexia rapidly improve language, reading and learning skills. As a result of his Genius Award, Dr. Merzenich is working on project titled, "Development of a New Generation of Computer-Implemented Training Tools Designed for Therapeutic Application in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders." The primary objective of this research and development project is to design, produce, and test the application of new training tools designed to ameliorate the expressions of Autism Spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Initial funding is supporting studies designed to provide crucial preliminary information that will help set up the accelerated development of these new treatment strategies. The outcome of this effort is hoped to be a combination of tools and techniques that could make a significant impact on those severely affected by autism.

In 2005, another project in our neural re-training initiative began with a bridge grant to Dr. Jaime A. Pineda in the Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego to conduct research into the effectiveness of an experimental treatment for ASD known as Neurofeedback Training. Neurofeedback is a non-evasive procedure in which the brain is re-trained to increase or decrease the level of specific brain rhythms. Dr. Pineda and colleagues had previously published that an electrophysiological readout known as mu rhythm suppression, which is believed to be an indicator of mirror neuron activity, is abnormal in individuals with autism. The grant from CAN will allow Dr. Pineda to test if Neurofeedback Training of mu rhythm suppression in children with ASD will improve their behavior, especially their ability to imitate.

Collectively, we believe that these proposed experiments are as important as are any now being directed toward the therapeutic training of ASD children. They hold out the real hope that ASD may be preventable in many at-risk children, may be significantly reversible in at least some very young ASD children, and that through understanding the neurology of the origins of, and the expressions of ASD, much more effective training tools can be developed