UFRO School of Medicine promotes research in Neurodiversity

Through the creation of the Center for Advanced Research in Neurodiversity (CIAN) of the University of La Frontera, answers are sought to understand a series of processes, of which there are still no studies, on the autism spectrum and other areas associated with neurodiversity.

Fabian Aguirre Silva, Journalist.- Thus, CIAN seeks to promote scientific development in lines of research associated with Neurodiversity such as neurosciences, neurodevelopment, disability, education and inclusion to promote collaboration, develop research projects and actions that allow linking with the community to generate a contribution from research. to the region and the country.

This new Center is led by the child and adolescent psychiatrist and teacher of the Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry from the University of La Frontera, Sandra Venegas. “In Chile there are few prevalence studies, but international projections with local reality estimate that one in 81 people have autism spectrum traits. It is the only study that has been done on prevalence in the urban population of Santiago, the figure is one every 51 children. That is why the TEA Law is so important and because it was born from the activism and social movement generated by the parents of people on the autism spectrum ”, she clarifies.

“Neurodiversity arises from the autistic community, with a proposal that differences in human characteristics appear as a result of variations in the neurological field. Historically, these people have been reduced to disorders, alterations, disabilities or pathologies, that is, the emphasis of the State’s gaze has been welfare and has always been placed on deficit or lack. Examples of Neurodivergence are Dyscalculia, Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Tourette Syndrome, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and especially people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that are considered within neurodevelopmental disorders. People’s cognitive processes encompass a series of valuable conditions, due to their strengths and challenges that allow everyone to be included, and to genuinely dimension Neurodiversity”, adds Dr. Venegas.

In this sense, the director of the Department of Mental Health and Psychiatry of the UFRO School of Medicine, Dr. Luis Silva, commented that this Center “enables knowledge that is not available, there is the path where exploration should go at this time. Today we teach what is known, but there are always questions, for example, if we see a child with a different condition and belongs to the autism spectrum, we wonder where the central nervous system development problems are. CIAN will explore frontiers and we don’t know where it will end due to the scope of obtaining knowledge in this specific branch of Neurodiversity”, explains Dr. Silva.

Dr. Luis Silva added that, in the history of psychiatric knowledge, a branch started saying that everything is in the brain, located the functions and had the impression of complete knowledge about how our behaviors, emotions and personality configuration work, but things appeared that did not match the knowledge obtained.

“When we had a person classified as having schizophrenia, it was assumed that there was a neurobiological problem, but there were pictures with more than one expression of the nervous system. For example, if someone has enormous difficulties during their intrauterine life and the brain was affected, they knew what could happen, but there were other cases where there were doubts about why a child did not socialize properly, why he has spaces that he manages as his own that are so incomprehensible to us, why he uses an object as if it were a magical thing that we don’t know. What happens with that nervous system, how it is developing, what happens with other diseases where we see neuronal alterations. There will be a development and studies in relation to clinical pictures of various appearances or clinical appearance with debatable letterheads. Before there was talk of autism, today of autism spectrum ”.

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LINKS

CIAN has a series of links with other national and international centers, with the participation of Chilean, Brazilian, and Spanish universities. Within UFRO, it maintains a close relationship with the Psychology degree, which allows a comprehensive look at neurodevelopment and neurodiversity. Likewise, public and private foundations, observatories, educational establishments and the Araucanía Sur Health Service participate in its work.

“We were born due to the interest and concern of various health professionals to understand this concept and the different ways in which the brain and nervous system can develop. We are not talking about pathologies but about different conditions and we have formed to develop knowledge linked to the community to nourish ourselves on what the groups themselves say with neurodivergent people, associations of parents with autistic children, associations of people with hyperactivity and attention deficit”, he adds Sandra Venegas, who leads this project, along with Dr. Flery Fonseca, and mg. Ana Cristina Sandoval, Elly Aravena and Margarita Marilao.

Likewise, a strong item of CIAN is research. At present there are already three ongoing projects with university funds. The first is a study of the microbiota in people on the autism spectrum led by Dr. Flery Fonseca; the second is led by the therapist Ana Cristina Sandoval and seeks the sensory development of people on the spectrum and its relationship with their behavior regarding the adaptation they have socially, but focused on schoolchildren. The third project is led by Dr. Venegas with the contribution of undergraduate and postgraduate Medicine students, and aims to develop a single easy-to-use scale for screening and screening of mental health symptoms in adolescents and young people.

Another of the central points of CIAN’s work points to the development of teaching, but now strengthened with the recently promulgated TEA Law and the training of health professionals. “We are indebted to education professionals to understand neurodivergence and neurodiversity”, concludes Dr. Venegas. CIAN has already begun its work, which is expected to bear enormous fruit in these areas of health, where there are still many questions that can be answered with this new generation of knowledge.