Mental introspection increases as brain areas begin to act in sync

Mental introspection increases as brain areas begin to act in sync

Science News

Mental Introspection Increases as Brain Areas Begin to Act in Sync

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — Neuroscientists at Georgetown University Medical Center can now show, using functional MRI images, why it is that behavior in children and young adolescents veers toward the egocentric rather than the introspective.

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In findings presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in San Diego on Nov. 14, the researchers say that the five scattered regions in the brain that make up the default-mode network (DMN) have not started working in concert in youngsters aged six to nine. These areas light up in an fMRI scan, but not simultaneously.

The DMN is only active when the mind is at rest and allowed to wander or daydream. This network is believed to be key in how a person introspectively understands themselves and others, and forms beliefs, intentions, and desires through autobiographical memory.

By ages 10 to 12, the researchers found that these diffuse regions start functioning together as a unit, and at ages 13 to19, they acted in concert, just like they do in adults.

"These results suggest that children develop introspection over time as their brains develop," says the study's first author, neuroscientist Stuart Washington, Ph.D., who will be presenting the results. "Before then they are somewhat egocentric, which is not to mean that they are negatively self-centered, but they think that everyone views the world in the same way they do. They lack perspective in that way."

In this study, the researchers sought to understand if connectivity between distant regions in the brain increases with age. They chose the DMN to study in part because it consists of a widespread system of neuronal nodes that work together, but are linked in a way that is not yet well understood. (These discrete nodes could be physically connected by neuronal synapses or they could fire together and not be connected.)

Previous research has suggested that the DMN is not well synchronized in many autistic individuals, and this may explain the perceptions many of these individuals express in testing -- a viewpoint that is also seen in younger children who do not have autism, Washington says.

An example that illustrates the difference between an egocentric and an introspective view is the simple puzzle, Washington says: "Jane" walks into a room, and puts a marble in a closet, and then "Bill" comes in and takes the marble out of the closet and puts it into a box. Jane comes back in and looks for the marble and she has not spoken to Bill. Where does she look for the marble?

The right answer, of course, is that she looks in the closet. But many autistic individuals say Jane looks in the box, "because they know that the marble is in the box and they think that everyone else knows that," Washington says. The ability to see the world from the perspective of others is called "Theory of Mind" (ToM) and certain nodes of the DMN have been associated with it. The failure to develop ToM seen in many autistics individuals and younger children may lie in asynchronous firing of the DMN, Washington says.

In this study, the research team enrolled 42 participants: 10 individuals which were aged six to 9; 12 were aged 10 to 12; 9 individuals which were aged 13 to19, and 10 were aged 22 to 27 years. The scientists' goal was to study the development of functional connectivity between the anterior and posterior nodes of DMN across the four age groups.

They gave the participants a task to perform, but the scientists were actually interested in recording brain activity that took place after the task was over, when the patients were told to rest.

In the group of children ages six to nine, the researchers saw the same kind of lack of synchronicity seen in older autistic children, Washington says.

The older participants in this study were, the more in sync the DMN functioned, reaching a plateau in adulthood, he says. Significant differences were noted between children and adolescents, and children and adults, he adds. "These increases in functional connectivity coincide with introspective mental activity that has been shown to emerge during adolescence."

The study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development

Binge drinking in adolescence changes stress response in adulthood

Binge Drinking in Adolescence Changes Stress Response in Adulthood

ScienceDaily (Nov. 16, 2010) — Alcohol exposure during adolescence alters the body's ability to respond to stress in adulthood, according to new research in rats presented at Neuroscience 2010, the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, held in San Diego. Because problems regulating stress are associated with behavioral and mood disorders, the findings may indicate that binge drinking in adolescence leads to increased risk of anxiety or depression in adulthood.

Binge drinking, defined as more than four or five drinks in a single session, typically begins around age 13 and peaks between ages 18 and 22. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 36 percent of teens aged 18 to 20 reported at least one binge-drinking episode in the previous 30 days.

The researchers, directed by Toni Pak, PhD, at Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine, found that rats exposed to a binge pattern of alcohol consumption around the time of puberty had lower circulating levels of the stress hormone corticosterone -- akin to the human hormone cortisol -- in adulthood. However, in response to the physical stress of alcohol exposure, these same rats showed a greater spike in corticosterone than rats that had not previously been exposed to alcohol.

"Our findings suggest that alcohol exposure during puberty permanently alters the system by which the brain triggers the body to produce stress hormones," said Pak. "This indicates that exposing young people to alcohol could permanently disrupt connections in the brain that are normally formed during puberty and are necessary to ensure healthy adult brain function," she said.

Research was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Pregnant drinking 'affects sperm'

Page last updated at 11:06 GMT, Tuesday, 29 June 2010 12:06 UK

From BBC News

By Emma Wilkinson
Health reporter, BBC News, in Rome The relationship between drinking and sperm quality is not clear

Women who drink during pregnancy may be damaging the future fertility of their sons, research suggests.

In a study of almost 350 young men, sperm levels were a third lower in those whose mothers had drunk more than four drinks a week during pregnancy compared with teetotallers.

The Danish researchers told a fertility conference these men may have a harder time getting their partner pregnant.

UK experts said alcohol may not be the issue, but a marker for other factors.

Current advice is to avoid alcohol during pregnancy, but those who do so are advised to have no more than one or two units of alcohol once or twice a week.

The study included men, now aged between 18 and 21, whose mothers had taken part in a large study on lifestyle while they were pregnant with them.

Researchers told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference that they split the men into four groups - those whose mothers drank nothing, those who had one to one and a half drinks a week, two to four drinks a week, or more than four drinks a week.

One drink was classed as a beer, small glass of wine or one measure of spirits.

Four drinks in the study is equivalent to around six UK units.

When they looked at sperm counts in the men's semen samples, they found those with the highest alcohol exposure in the womb had average concentrations of 25 million per millilitre compared with 40 million/ml in those whose mothers drank no alcohol.

After adjusting for factors which might influence sperm, such as smoking and medical history, they calculated that average sperm concentration was 32% lower in the highest alcohol group than the abstinence group.

Fertility effects

The World Health Organization says that a normal range of sperm is 20 to 40 million/ml.

It is known that lower concentrations of sperm - even within the normal range - may mean it takes longer to conceive.

Study leader Dr Cecilia Ramlau-Hansen, from Aarhus University Hospital, said that if the link is proven in further studies, it may explain why semen quality seems to have fallen in recent decades.

"If exposure to alcohol in foetal life causes poor semen quality in adult life, we would expect that populations with many pregnant women drinking, possibly heavily, in pregnancy would have lower fertility in comparison with populations where pregnant women do not drink."

Dr Allan Pacey, senior lecturer in andrology at the University of Sheffield, said the study was very interesting and supported the theory that male fertility was influenced at an early stage by factors in the womb.

But he pointed out that the low sperm levels seen did not equate to infertility.

"I don't think we can be certain that alcohol is necessarily the bad thing here - it could be a surrogate marker for something else - but clearly there is some kind of relationship.

"It needs following up but it might help us understand factors which affect testicle development in the womb."

Drug addicts offered cash to stop reproducing

From Britain's Daily Telegraph:

Addicts are being offered up to £200 cash to be sterilised so they do not give birth to drug dependent children.

By Tom Whitehead, Home Affairs Editor
Published: 4:24PM BST 09 Apr 2010

A controversial American charity is now offering the service to addicts in the UK and has set up a helpline for those interested.

Pro-life campaigners said the offer was "inhuman".

Project Prevention claims to have stopped 3,500 drink and drugs addicts from having more children by paying them to be sterilised.

It has now received £13,000 from an anonymous British donor to help launch a similar service in the UK.

But the campaigner behind the scheme, Barbara Harris, from North Carolina, shrugged off concerns that the money will just be spent on buying more drugs.

And anyone in Britain taking up the offer will still be expected to have the treatment done on the NHS at the taxpayer's expense.

Barbara Harris said she has visited drugs agencies in London to discuss the scheme and added: “I’ve got hundreds of emails from people in the UK saying: 'You need to come here, please come over here, we need your help.

"We’re going to make this offer to drug addicts, social workers, law enforcement. Anyone who comes in contact with these women can refer addicts to us now we have an 0800 number here in the UK."

She said drug users would have to go to their own GP or hospital to arrange the sterilisation and produce a certificate to prove it had been carried out.

She came up with the idea after seeing her own adopted children having to withdraw off crack cocaine after their birth.

Anthony Ozimic, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), said: "It is inhuman to seek to eliminate human problems by eliminating humans themselves. Such campaigns should have no place in Britain."

Select Committee on Mental Health and Addictions (Ontario)

I reported to the Select Committee on mental Health and Addictions vis-a-vis FASD, along with a colleague back in September and the Committee has now completed its Interim Report. This report is available on the Legislative Assembly web site at: http://www.ontla.on.ca/committee-proceedings/committee-reports/files_pdf/SCMHA-InterimReport-March2010.pdf

Pages of particular interest are 10 (First Nations, Inuit and Metis Peoples), and 31 (specific illnesses). Some snippets:

"Witnesses noted that early diagnosis is key, as is the case with most conditions. However, FASD diagnoses are complex and typically require a multi-disciplinary team. Thus, FASD is frequently misdiagnosed as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or autism, and treated incorrectly, if at all, or simply dismissed as bad behaviour.

"Witnesses advocated for proper diagnostic services, case management, special education and developmental programs, addictions counselling, assisted living options, skills training, the provision of structured environments, and respite care for families.

"It was also recommended that a single ministry take the lead for this condition and provide a targeted pool of resources. At present, FASD has "orphan" status, as no ministry assumes responsibility for it, and it lacks as OHIP billing code. Finally, care for individuals with FASD should be incorporated into a strategy for those with concurrent disorders, and a prevention campaign sensitive to the needs of particular communities should be developed."

High prevalence of epilepsy associated with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder

http://news.oneindia.in/2010/04/06/highprevalence-of-epilepsy-associated-with-fetal-alcoholsp.html

Fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) refers to a range of negative developmental outcomes that result from maternal drinking during pregnancy. Children with FASD can suffer from many problems, including epilepsy, a disorder characterized by spontaneous recurrence of unprovoked seizures.

The study will be published in the June 2010 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"There are very few studies that have examined the relationship between seizures and epilepsy among individuals with FASD," noted James Reynolds, a senior scientist with the department of pharmacology and toxicology and the Centre for Neuroscience Studies, at Queens University. Reynolds is one of the study's authors.

"Many patients with epilepsy have a history of exposure to a prenatal insult, so we reasoned that prenatal exposure to alcohol could be such an epileptogenic insult," added Peter Carlen, a neurologist and senior scientist for the division of fundamental neurobiology at the Toronto Western Hospital, another of the study's authors.

"Secondly, there is a significant overlap in brain structures that suffer from deficits as a result of chronic prenatal alcohol exposure and those that are associated with seizures, specifically in the brain's hippocampus. Thirdly, previous studies had failed to examine other complications that occur in mothers who drink alcohol during pregnancy, such as the effects of drinking on seizure activity. Finally, previous studies used small sample sizes and failed to clearly define seizures and FASD."

"Recently, scientists have begun investigating whether fetal alcohol exposure increases the risk for developing other behavioral health and neurological problems," added Dan Savage, Regents' Professor and chair of neurosciences at the University of New Mexico. "Indeed, evidence has begun to suggest that children with FASD are at greater risk for alcoholism, substance abuse or depression later in life.

While it is too soon in the relatively young history of this research field to assess whether maternal drinking during pregnancy increases the risk of aging-related neurologic disorders, such as stroke or Parkinson's disease, several recent large-scale retrospective studies have examined whether fetal alcohol exposure increases the risk of developing epilepsy."

For the study, researchers examined the histories of 425 individuals (254 males, 171 females), between the ages of two and 49 years, from two FASD clinics. Relationships between a confirmed FASD diagnosis and other risk factors - such as exposure to alcohol or other drugs, type of birth, and trauma - were examined for the co-occurrence of epilepsy or a history of seizures.

"This study revealed a much higher prevalence of epilepsy and seizure history in individuals with a diagnosis of FASD," said Stephanie H. Bell, a researcher with the Centre for Neuroscience Studies at Queens University and corresponding author for the study. "In the general population, less than one percent are expected to develop epilepsy; of those with FASD, six percent had epilepsy and 12 percent had one or more seizures in their life. Subjects were more likely to have epilepsy, or a history of seizures, if exposure to alcohol had occurred in the first trimester or throughout the entire pregnancy."

"While this report supports a growing impression that fetal alcohol exposure may predispose the immature brain to the development of epilepsy, the results do not establish a direct cause-effect relationship between FASD and epilepsy," cautioned Savage. "Establishing a direct link between these clinical conditions will be a difficult challenge given our incomplete understanding of how ethanol damages the developing brain and what neuropathological changes in brain tissue lead to the development of different types of epilepsy." (ANI)

'Unfit' mother of 10 costs council £2.5m

A council faces a £2.5m bill because social workers have taken 10 children away from a mother judged unfit to have them.

By Alastair Jamieson
Published: 5:20PM BST 28 Mar 2010

The woman, named only as Rachael, wants custody of her children and has said she will “keep going” until authorities let her keep one.

The 33-year-old, who lives in Birmingham, had the 10 children by six different fathers but social workers deemed them at risk of neglect; five were adopted, four are in long-term foster care and one is awaiting adoption.

The total projected cost to the taxpayer of looking after her children – aged between 17 months and 15 years – is estimated at £1.5m, while legal fees, adoption costs and social workers’ time, bring the total to £2.5m.

John Hemming, woman’s MP in Birmingham Yardley and a campaigner for reform of the family courts, said the case illustrated the potential cost of removing children because parents often go on to have more offspring.

He said at least 500 of the 6,000-plus annual care applications involved mothers having more than one child taken away.

“You could not sit down and devise a more expensive and wasteful way of dealing with a family problem,” he said. “The legal costs involved can be almost as much as the care itself.

“In practice, if Rachael had been allowed to keep her children in a place where she was away from abusive men and where she could be supervised, it would have been much more beneficial in the long term.

“She is trying to cope and all the state is doing is hitting her over the head every time. This is a problem not just in Birmingham but throughout England.”

Rachael, who has never married, told a newspaper she intended to have her next child in Spain or Ireland to try to prevent the authorities from taking it.

“I want my kids back but I know it isn’t going to happen,” she said. “I will keep going until they let me keep one.”

Social services first placed her children on the protection register because her first partner was abusive while her second was revealed to be a sex offender.

She had further children with another partner but he left her and she was deemed unable to cope.

Birmingham City Council, which has about 2,000 children in its care, said it could not comment on individual cases or their costs but that it was spending £41m over five years on pilot programmes to offer early support to parents who are struggling to cope.

It hopes to reduce the number of children it takes into care by five per cent per year, saving the agencies involved £400m.

Cheryl Hopkins, Birmingham’s director of strategy and commissioning in children’s services, said: “Obviously we have to keep children safe, but what we know is that the outcomes for children who are in care are not good in terms of their life chances, and it costs us a fortune.”

FASD association quits, cites onerous demands - Winnipeg Free Press

FASD association quits, cites onerous demands - Winnipeg Free Press

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FASD is a cause of Autism?

What Is Real Autism?
By Lisa Jo Rudy, About.com Guide
Updated January 08, 2010

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

Question: What Is Real Autism?
There's plenty of controversy over the question, "What is real autism?" If a child once had symptoms, but now no longer has symptoms, was it "real" autism to begin with? What if the symptoms were caused by a known issue, or started after a child turned three? Here are answers from a top expert, Dr. Susan Levy of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
Answer: While the definition of "real" autism may seem elusive, in fact it's much simpler than you might imagine. If a child under the age of three develops symptoms which meet the criteria for an autism spectrum disorder, then that child is appropriately diagnosable on the autism spectrum. Period.

To clarify this point, I asked Dr. Susan Levy, a top autism expert at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia:

If a person has "autism-like" symptoms, does he or she have an autism spectrum disorder? That is, if a person has, for example, fetal alcohol syndrome with "autism-like" symptoms, does that person have autism caused by FAS, or FAS with autism-like symptoms, or a dual diagnosis?

Here is how Dr. Levy answered the question:
If they meet the criteria, they have autism. Those medical issues are the underlying cause. Autism is the end-product of different biological entities. FAS [fetal alcohol syndrome] may be a cause of autism. The medical issue may cause the problem. There could also be confounding issues that make diagnosis difficult. [It's also critical that] onset must be before age 3. if there are cognitive impairments after age 3, it's not autism - it's brain injury with autism-like symptoms.
Dr. Levy says, while about 80% of autism is idiopathic (of unknown cause), there are at present many known causes of autism including FAS, rubella, Fragile X Syndrome, and more. In addition, according to a a report published in Pediatrics in 2009 entitled "Prevalence of parent-reported diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder among children in the US, 2007," as many as 40% of children who received an autism spectrum disorder at some point in their lives are no longer diagnosable on the autism spectrum.

Sources:

Interview with Dr. Susan E. Levy, MD, Director, Regional Autism Center, Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, December 2009.

Rice, Catherine. "Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders." Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, United States, 2006.

__._,_.___

New Normative Data Will Improve Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

TORONTO, Feb. 17 /CNW/ - Fetal Alcohol Research, the official journal of FACE (Fetal Alcohol Canadian Expertise), has published breakthrough research by Dr. Sterling Clarren, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Canada Northwest FASD Research Network and colleagues, establishing Canadian norms which will allow more accurate diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Normal Distribution of Palpebral Fissure Lengths in Canadian School Age Children, by S. Clarren, A.E. Chudley, L. Wong, J.Friesen, R. Brant @ http://www.cjcp.ca/pubmed.php?articleId=253

FASD is the most prevalent cause of mental handicap among Canadian children. Caused by maternal drinking during pregnancy, FASD poses difficult diagnostic challenges. One of the hallmark physical features of FASD is the horizontal length of the eye slit opening (palpebral fissure). Affected children often have smaller eye slits for their age. To be able to define the relative size of the eye, it is crucial to have normative values from the population of healthy children. Till now these definitions were based on old data that did not include all racial and ethnic groups as represented in Canada. There was concern that some populations might have smaller eye size genetically.

Dr. Clarren said, "We found that eye size is similar enough in all racial groups that they can be evaluated through the same normal sample. We also found that the normal values are much smaller than in those presented in the literature. This finding is important because as many as 40% of children with normal eye size would have been diagnosed with have small eyes slits on the older charts regardless of their genetic background. These new data are critical if FAS prevalence is to be accurately measured in our country or anywhere else."

To interview Dr. Clarren, e-mail sclarren@cw.

bc.ca or call (604) 875-2996

For further information: Contact S. Santiago, FACE Research Network Coordinator, Tel: (416) 813-8084, journal.fas@sickkids.ca, www.motherisk.org/FAR

Woody Harrelson plays a superhero with fetal alcohol syndrome in 'Defendor.'

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/movies/article/764221--woody-harrelson-loved-filming-defendor-in-hamilton
Toronto Star
Entertainment - Movies

Woody Harrelson loved filming Defendor in Hamilton
Filming in Hamilton enjoyable experience for cast of Defendor
Published On Fri Feb 12 2010
By Linda Barnard Movies Writer

[Photo]
Woody Harrelson plays a superhero with fetal alcohol syndrome in 'Defendor.'
SUPPLIED PHOTO

Woody Harrelson paused for a little "freaking out" before his first scene as Arthur Poppington, a child-like man with a duct-tape D on his shirt who truly believes he's a bullet-stopping superhero in Defendor, opening Feb. 19.

"I tell you what: before I shot it, the day before, I had no f--king clue what I was doing," a smiling Harrelson said in his familiar Texas drawl as he talked with the Star in a Yorkville hotel the day before Defendor had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last September.

"I really had no clue and I was freaking out. I do that sometimes before I start," Harrelson said slowly, starting to laugh. "Well, pretty much every time before I start."

Called "one of the great American actors of his generation" by Defendor writer/director Peter Stebbings, Harrelson has been nominated for two Best Actor Oscars – as the infamous Hustler publisher in The People vss. Larry Flynt in 1996 and again this year for The Messenger (scheduled to open in Toronto Feb. 26), playing a U.S. Army soldier who brings bad news to families about their loved ones.

Lean and square-jawed with piercing blue eyes, Harrelson seems to be a man whose passions run close to the surface. He gets excited about things - from a reporter's briefcase on wheels ("that's cool!") to Stebbings' Defendor screenplay.

"When I read the script, I was, `Oh my god! This is so clever.' It's so beautiful and original and such a beautiful story."

Shot in Hamilton, an experience both Harrelson and his co-star Kat Dennings said they enjoyed – "I did have a good time!" Harrelson said entthusiastically – Defendor is Toronto-based Stebbings' directing debbut.

"Woody is unbelievable. He can do anything," observed Dennings in an interview later the same day. "He's so much fun. We had so much fun together."

The 48-year-old Harrelson decided to approach Arthur by playing him as a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome.

"What happens is someone gets frozen at a young emotional age and so I decided to play it like that," Harrelson explained. "Reading about superheroes was when Arthur got stuck. Generally, it's just more playing a kid."

Defendor follows Arthur's self-appointed mission to protect local citizens from his archenemy, Captain Industry. Along the way he befriends Kat (played by Dennings), a wiseass street kid with a crack habit.

"I was inspired by some people I had met with the illness (FAS) I perceived him to have," Harrelson explained, adding he wanted to keep Arthur's emotional limitations subtle. "This isn't Rain Man."

Harrelson said Arthur really took form for him after he met a young Toronto man with FAS.

"I wanted to do justice to this character," he said. "I met this kid before I started shooting – 21 years old, a really amazing guy. I wass so knocked out by this guy. I met him with his mother ... I really had to find a way to simplify what I was going for. It's a guy who is still a kid. It's as simple as that."

In Defendor, the 40-something Arthur lives as a squatter in a Hamilton municipal works yard. At night, he suits up for battle as Defendor, donning a homemade costume, helmet and makeup mask. "Look out termites, it's squishing time," he announces.

Arthur's weapons are homemade, too, and some of the funniest scenes involve his improvised tools for taking down bad guys. Of course, Arthur never finds it humorous.

"It's imperative that you believe he believes," added Harrelson. "I love the dalliance between is it comedy, is it drama? It's so interesting to me."

His voice trailed off and suddenly, Harrelson started to laugh.

"This is a funny f---in' line where Arthur stands up and gets Tasered and all he can say is, `where can I get one of those?' That's funny, man! I gotta give him (Stebbings) credit."

A busy actor, Harrelson picks his roles with care. Most recently, he earned solid reviews as a Twinkie-munching undead-slayer in Zombieland and a bounty hunter in the Coen Bros' No Country for Old Men. He's played parts as varied as a country singer in A Prairie Home Companion and a mass murderer in Natural Born Killers since first catching the public's attention as uncomplicated bartender Woody on the 1980s-1990s hit TV series, Cheers.

Harrelson also has an affinity for Toronto. He helped lead about 1,000 people in a massive outdoor yoga session at the University of Toronto during TIFF 2003 to promote local filmmaker Ron Mann's doc, Go Further. Mann's camera followed Harrelson and friends on a bio-fuelled bus road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway to promote their environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

"I wouldn't mind doing another yoga here. That was a fun experience," said Harrelson. But the opportunity never arose.

Nor did it when he returned to Toronto the following month to accept an honorary doctorate from York University for his work on environmental causes.

A crusader for decriminalization of marijuana, the promotion of hemp products, global sustainability and living a vegan lifestyle (he ate only faux Twinkies in Zombieland), Harrelson is also known for what he calls his "actions" – civil disobedience to make a political point.

"I guess you could say I'm an armchair activist because I put the money behind things or get into things remotely," he said. "I try to breach the front line a bit. Politically people aren't doing anything and industry is not changing how they do things. There's a real consciousness going on with global warming.

"People are aware there's some funny s--t going on with the weather and change had better come soon."

Map of 40 Margaret Street Guelph, Ontario by MapQuest

Map of 40 Margaret Street Guelph, Ontario by MapQuest

I'm new to this whole Blogging thing!

I am hoping that this Blog will ultimately offer information on items in the news on FASD, notice of upcoming conferences, workshops of relevance, links to other sites on the web and occasionally the ravings of a tired mother! Of course, all this presupposes I will have enough spare time and energy. Hopefully, there will be some humour along the way. Laughter is the key to renewing the vital spark, and it's what keeps us all sane.