Left Brain/Right Brain first came into existence in 2003. Over the years it has changed its basic form a few times but its core content and interest has always been autism and the news, science – and bad science – associated with it.
Left Brain /Right Brain was started by Kevin Leitch. Over the years many people, autistics, parents and professionals have contributed articles.
Left Brain /Right Brain is currently operated by Matt Carey, a parent of an autistic child. Professionally, Mr. Carey is an industrial researcher in computer hardware with over 100 scientific publications in high impact journals and numerous patents. Mr. Carey has also presented a study at IMFAR and published a response reanalyzing autism administrative prevalence data from a previous study. Mr. Carey writes under the nickname “Sullivan”.
I like what I read! who is / are the writers Are you affiliated with any organization?
Thank You.
Michael
—2012 Current Trends in Autism Conference—
Hi Michael,
Thank you so much for mentioning last year’s conference on your site! I just wanted to inform you of this year’s conference. We’ve gone above and beyond to deliver participants the best CTIA Conference yet! We’ll have a special set of lectures discussing adult autism, the conference will be larger and with more guest speakers, and participants will have additional opportunities to interact and become involved in the autism community in New England! Please spread the word!
- Jerry Skefos
Coordinator, The Autism Research Foundation
Hi Mr. Carey,
I don’t know if you realize it, but in this post, http://leftbrainrightbrain.co.uk/2012/08/04/the-15-year-fallout-from-one-mans-lie-about-vaccines/ you have used a pseudonym to comment while using your own name to sign the posts.
While I’m sure it’s not your intention, it does give one the impression that you’ve been engaging in some “astroturfing.”
Even careful and regular readers of your blog posts may not remark on this, so accustomed to your pseudonym are we. But other autism bloggers have been called on this in the past, and I think its only fair to apply that same standard to LBRB. Perhaps you could be more careful about this in the future?
Morgan
Morgan,
thanks for that. I hadn’t thought of that perception. I’ll work on ways to make this more transparent.
-Matt Carey
Testing to see if edits to my profile come through in the comments.
Thanks, Morgan.
I think this works better.
@morgan – those other “autism / anti-vaccine” bloggers aren’t worth the electrons their words are printed on. I couldn’t care less about them & I’m sure, based on their relentless against against Mr. Carrey for the sole reason of his lack of support for their anti-vaccine screeds, that Sullivan couldn’t care less either what they think about the way he posts.
Hi Matt Carey -
You do a pretty good job of playing straight up the middle — and that is very much appreciated. Hate to see you stray into the rough.
Morgan
Dear Matt Carey,
I came across your site and wanted to share some helpful resources with you and your readers. The organization I work for, The Hanen Centre, is a Canadian not-for-profit charitable organization committed to helping young children communicate. Our expert speech-language pathologists have developed research-based programs and resources for parents, and we offer a great deal of useful information for free on our website.
The following are links to some of our articles that you might find interesting:
Follow the Leader: The Power of Imitating Children with Autism
http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Follow-the-Leader–The-Power-of-Imitating-Children.aspx
Helping Your Child Cope with His Sensory Needs
http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Articles/Helping-Your-Child-Cope-with-his-Sensory-Needs.aspx
You may also enjoy our tips and general information on building communication in children with autism:
http://www.hanen.org/Helpful-Info/Building-Communication-in-Children-with-Autism.aspx
I hope that you find our articles and tips helpful! You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter, where we regularly post about tips, relevant news articles, and events.
Best wishes,
The Hanen Centre
http://www.hanen.org
Hi Matt
I’m writing as a huge fan of your site, to let you know that I’ve written a list of the top 10 UK disability bloggers, and Left Brain Right Brain is on it. http://bit.ly/T0vbsB Have a look and let me know what you think!
Cheers – Steff Green, The Disabled Shop Blog
Thank you, very much. Kev Leitch made this site and made a big impact on changing the direction of online discourse about autism, especially within the parent community.
I thought you might like to blog about this…
With 1/88 children currently diagnosed with autism, new ideas for treatment and diagnosis are more important than ever. Three innovators in the field of autism are turning to crowd funding to support their ideas and research. Crowd funding (used heavily by the entertainment industry for years) has only recently begun to be a tool used by researchers.
British researcher Dr. Tamie Salter (tamie@queinnovations.com) is conducting a crowd funding project to help launch a new product called the KOULE (www.Indiegogo.com/KOULE). KOULE is a robotic ball that has programs that are designed to assist children living with cognitive challenges, such as autism. KOULE has been developed by a team of experts from different fields; including Child development experts and engineers, with promising preliminary results. Dr. Salter has research work in a book available on amazon (http://alturl.com/y9ztg), has been featured in a National Geographic Documentary and is being advised by some of the best technology business leaders.
Dr. Alisa Woods (awoods@clarkson.edu) is using a technique called mass spectrometry to try to develop an autism diagnostic test. Dr. Woods is analyzing proteins found in blood and saliva of children with autism and comparing them to kids without autism. She has found some promising markers that can indicate possible autism risk. Dr. Woods is not just a researcher; she is also a parent of a child with autism. She has seen the positive effects of early intervention first-hand. Dr. Woods has published a recent article focusing on cholesterol disturbances in psychiatric disorders, including ASD.
Individuals with autism seem to really enjoy playing video games. This being the case, why not use games to help them learn skills? As both a video game blogger and autism researcher, Dr. Elisabeth Whyte of Penn State is improving current computer-based intervention designs by including video game elements. Adolescence may be particularly important for developing face processing (Scherf, Luna, Minshew, and Behrmann, 2010). Preliminary results indicate that individual cartoon characters called “greebles” improved face recognition behavior for the adolescents with autism after completing the intervention, compared to adolescents with autism who did not play with the characters.
Hi Mr. Carey,
I am Anuna, an AAC Specialist training children with Autism. I have come across your site and I am quite interested to be a part of it. Please take a look at our blog:
http://www.avazapp.com/blog/
We update our blog once in a week with information about Autism and therapies related to it. Sharing is Caring. I believe it would be helpful for our readers being connected to a wonderful site like yours. Let me know if you need any further info about our blog.
Warmly,
Anuna, AAC Specialist.
Hi Matt Carey,
As a pediatrician, scientist and HMC (P’87) alum, we should consider communicating about mutual common interests.
Thanks,
Chris Hickie
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