Understanding Autism - Incite at Columbia University

Understanding Autism is devoted to understanding the factors that have led to the increase in autism prevalence over the last four decades.

Since receiving the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Pioneer Award, Incite Institute has made significant progress in ascertaining individual and community-level factors that are associated with an increased risk of autism.

Specifically, among other contributions, we have found evidence that points to new understandings of the expression of risk factors, of the role of de novo mutations in increasing risk, of spatial clustering at birth and diagnosis, which points to social dynamics as underlying risks of diagnosis, and of changes to the diagnostic pathway in relation to intellectual disabilities.

We rapidly expanded our data structures, analyzing new mechanisms associated with increased risk of autism and understanding in greater detail the developmental trajectories of persons with autism. In addition to quantitative data, the project collected life histories from individuals who have children with autism.

Later NIH support was for a project that contributes to public health by building and analyzing a unique population-level dataset designed to assess the association between Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and its subtypes and autism, intellectual disability, and cerebral palsy as well as investigate heterogeneity in risk and the factors that may affect the associations. This work better enables individuals and their health care providers to weigh the risks and benefits of ART procedures and to identify potential modifiable risk factors for autism and other developmental disabilities.