1. Healthy brain of adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders
ASD
ADHD and ASD: neurodevelopmental disorders
Overlapping etiology and mostly co-occurrent
Early, largely genetically determined onset
Lifelong; unsatisfactory treatment options
But:
substantial symptom improvement is
possible, mainly in adolescence!
Aim: to study adolescents showing substantial improvement of symptoms when turning into adulthood to extract protective and curative factors for designing new treatment options.
ADHD severe
ADHD mild
age
During the last three decades, huge efforts and progress has been made in unraveling factors underlying the two most common and often co-occurring neurodevelopmental disorders: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both disorders have an early, partly overlapping, strongly genetically determined onset. Therefore, my proposal will switch gears. I will study children showing substantial improvement of symptoms when turning into adulthood to extract protective and curative factors for designing new treatment options.
The key question is: why do some children deteriorate, others remain stable and again others show remarkable improvement of ASD and ADHD symptoms (Figure)? My key hypothesis are that a subset of individuals will show symptom remission/recovery into adulthood influenced by factors other than those influencing onset .
12/28/2018