Elementary school students here are working on a project to raise awareness of autism.

Based on a national campaign to "find the missing pieces of autism," students are creating paintings with missing pieces, much like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle.

The paintings will be sold at a silent auction on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Worden Art Studio, 4789 SE Dixie Highway, Port Salerno, with the proceeds going to pay for autism research, according to Kristina Burrows of the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.

"Each year the PTO chooses a charity to support. This year, we chose to help the local chapter of Autism Speaks," she said. She attributed the idea to Joy Burgener, chairperson of the event.

Burrows also noted that a group from the school called the "Stingray Shufflers" would participate in a walkathon at Jensen Beach High School on March 20 to raise money and awareness for Autism Speaks.

She said all 32 classes – some 650 children from kindergarten to fifth grade – hand a hand in the project.

"The kids really enjoyed doing the ‘missing pieces’ paintings particularly as they knew the project would benefit autism," said Burrows.

She said she was expecting a good turnout of parents and local business people. "Actually anyone who wants to support autism research is welcome," said Burrows.

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The United Way of Essex and West Hudson recently suspended funding of many programs, due to the national economic situation. Because of this, after 5 years, the afterschool program, Kidz Korner, hosted at the Branch Brook School by Autism Family Services of New Jersey (AFSNJ), a division of The Family Resource Network, will be ending its services mid-year. While Autism Family Services of NJ might normally have been able to absorb some costs, funds have been exhausted, threatening the program.

New Jersey was recently named a “Top 10 State for Afterschool”, according to the Afterschool Alliance’s Survey of NJ Households, because of a high increase in enrollment numbers since 2004. However, New Jersey is lacking in after school programs designed for children with developmental disabilities, namely autism, the prevalence of which is highest in New Jersey.

“The number one gap in services, identified by parents completing our annual Family Support Survey, is for after school care,” said Jessica Goldsmith Barzilay, Assistant Director of The Family Resource Network.

Finding care after school hours for children with autism and other developmental disabilities is markedly difficult for parents. Due to the nature of their disabilities, children frequently become isolated from the main stream. Children may require one-on-one assistance with social interactions, behaviors, or communication which most after school programs cannot accommodate without additional, trained staff.

AFSNJ has developed a program in Newark that brings children who attend school outside their district back to their home school for after care. By connecting these students to their own school district, Kidz Korner also connects them to all the activities and events hosted in their area they would otherwise not hear about, such as the annual bus trip to the Liberty Science Center.

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 Young artist Haley Moss knows that middle school can be rough. In her new book, Middle School: The Stuff Nobody Tells You About, Haley wrote an extensive “survival guide” for succeeding in middle school, a time she found particularly difficult because of her autism. The book is the latest release from Autism Asperger Publishing Company (www.asperger.net), a leading publisher of books about autism, Asperger Syndrome and related pervasive developmental disorders.

At just 15 years old, Haley is already an accomplished artist. Her work has been featured around the Miami area at such places as ArtCetera (www.artceteraboca.com), Grove Pop Art (www.grovepopart.com), and the Hertz Jewelers Gallery Experience (www.hertzgalleryexperience.com). She also donated a piece to the University of Miami/NSU Center for Autism and Related Disabilities, which sold for $1,200 at auction.

Most recently, Haley’s constant desire to express herself creatively and to help other girls with autism succeed led her to write Middle School: The Stuff Nobody Tells You About. In her book, Haley covers every aspect of middle school, from lockers to lunch and new classes to new friends. To balance out Haley’s personal experiences, there is also advice from middle school teachers and other girls on the autism spectrum.

“I would like to share my experiences and give you some advice so that your middle school years may be easier for you,” Haley writes. “I spearheaded the expedition, so to speak. I hope you can learn from my mistakes, admire my successes and try to do the right things and make good choices for yourself.”

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Lawrence Wang used to hate the shrill sounds of the flute. He'd clamp his hands over his ears to drown out his sister's piano playing. During music lessons, he'd fidget and fight with his teacher.

On Saturday, though, he tapped his feet while blowing happily on his saxophone, a member of an unusual band of special-needs performers.

Those who love Wang and his peers are thrilled to see how music calms their autistic nerves and becomes a unifying force in a world where they often don't easily fit.

"Don't ever give up on your children,'' said Lawrence's mother, Anna Wang of Fremont, who through her son, now 20, has become a prominent Silicon Valley autism activist. "You've got to open them up to possibilities. We so often write them off. It doesn't do our children justice. God has gifts for everyone.''

Later this month, Wang and 21 others have gigs at the East Side Union High School District and at a Santa Clara restaurant with his predominantly autistic band, the Magic Makers.

Autism is a bioneurological disease often marked by impaired social behavior, such as making scant eye contact and speaking repetitively.As the 1988 film "Rain Main" demonstrated, autistic people can also have geniuslike qualities. In that Academy-Award winning film, the lead character, played by Dustin Hoffman, was gifted in memory and math.

Some of the Magic Makers are gifted in music.

Wang's mother calls him a "music savant." He doesn't practice.

He doesn't sight-read. And he still mostly argues with his music teachers during lessons. But pop in a CD, and in an instant "Lawrence hears the music and almost simultaneously transposes it,'' his mother said. "It's really weird.''

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I subscribe to a number of autism feeds on Facebook- both neurodiversity and cure side of things.  The Candy Store podcast I don't normally listen to, they're usually very cure-side of things.  But this morning, they hosted an interview with <A href="http://www.autismone.org/content/autismone-candy-store-our-special-guest-dr-temple-grandin-phd-who-most-accomplished-and-well">Temple Grandin!</A>, heroine of the neurodiversity movement.

Max Braverman is not your typical 8-year-old.

The younger child of a central character in NBC's new "Parenthood," Max wears a pirate costume to school every day, fails to acknowledge a classmate's "hello" and bites a kid who calls him a "freak" (after Max keeps crumpling up construction paper).

After that incident, the school's principal gingerly recommends that Max see an educational therapist — whose evaluation we later learn in a heart-wrenching scene.

"She thinks he may have Asperger's … high-functioning autism," Max's mom (Monica Potter) tells her husband, Adam (Peter Krause), who's deeply in denial and argues why this couldn't be so. "Honey, there's something wrong with our baby," his wife says, pleading, "Please don't make me be alone with this."

This scenario is something many parents of "Aspies" will relate to, says Nicoletta LaMarca Sacco of Cliffside Park, who has a 12-year-old son with Asperger's syndrome and is coordinator of the Bergen County chapter of ASPEN (Asperger's Syndrome Parent Education Network). "Even if you are raising one child and don't have any siblings to compare him to, you can tell if something's off."

Although she and the other local autism experts we contacted had not previewed "Parenthood," based on our description of key scenes and the fact that one of the executive producers has a child with Asperger syndrome (also called disorder), they are hopeful the show will educate the public about this autism spectrum disorder.

"Given the large percent of individuals out there with Asperger's, I think that it is really important that the media is catching up with incorporating characters on TV and in movies that reflect the true-life experiences of individuals with a spectrum disorder, especially Asperger's," says Jeanne Marron, clinical director of Asperger's Related Services at West Bergen Mental Healthcare in Ridgewood, Ramsey and Oakland.

Deeper understanding

Linda Meyer is executive director of Autism New Jersey, a non-profit agency providing information and advocacy, services, education and consultation. She recalls that after "Rain Man" premiered in 1988, the Autism Society of America said the movie "did more to promote autism to the public in something like two months than they had managed to achieve in many, many years."

The downside of "Rain Man," she adds, was that "for years everybody thought the character that Dustin Hoffman played was autism," rather than one portrayal of it. She's hoping the new TV show will broaden people's understanding that there is a spectrum.

"Persons with Asperger's disorder have problems with behavior and social skills, but they don't have problems generally with language and communication," explains Meyer, one of the founders of the Alpine Learning Group, a Paramus-based non-profit school for children with autism, in operation since 1989. "These are the individuals, particularly at school age, who are very capable of expressing themselves. Frequently, they stay on one topic. … It might be trains or insects or some form of science or weather. When they're sharing their vast knowledge of this particular topic, they're not aware that it might not be of interest to others."

NBC's hour-long "Parenthood" is based on the 1989 movie, which featured a child with an unspecified emotional disturbance. Director Ron Howard noted recently that "the Asperger's diagnosis wasn't on the radar 20 years ago."

Personal experience

Howard, who also produced a short-lived half-hour spinoff in 1990, is an executive producer of the new project. But the "show runner" is executive producer Jason Katims, who has firsthand knowledge of Asperger's.

"I have been researching it steadily for the past 13 years, because I have a son with Asperger's," Katims told television reporters in January, adding that it "is very important for me to depict that as realistically as possible."

During a recent teleconference, Katims said a guiding principle "was the idea that your children are never the people you expected them to be" and parents have to figure out "how to deal with that and ultimately really accept that."

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Thai massage may be helpful for children with autism, according to a recently published report. The study involved 60 children between the ages three and 10, all of whom were autistic.

For the study, all children received either Thai massage or sensory integration therapy for eight weeks. (An approach sometimes used in treatment of autism, sensory integration therapy aims to help regulate the patient's sensory responses. Many people with autism experience dysfunction in their sensory processing.) By the study's end, both treatment groups showed improvements in conduct problems and anxiety. In past studies, researchers have found that massage may also improve sleep, classroom concentration, and social interactions in people with autism.

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Showtime says it plans to air the U.S. documentary "Dad's in Heaven with Nixon" in April, which is Autism Awareness Month.

Broadcast journalist Tom Murray wrote, directed and produced the film.

"Through candid testimonials, old photos and decades of home movies, Murray weaves together the saga of three generations of his family," Showtime said in a news release Monday.

"Murray's great-grandfather Thomas E. Murray was a brilliant inventor who held patents to hundreds of inventions -- second only to Thomas Edison. But the life of his son, John F. Murray was destroyed by depression and bipolar disorder, afflictions shared by his son, Murray's own father Thomas E. Murray II, a successful stockbroker who ultimately lost his family fortune.

"Later, Murray's brother Chris, who was born severely oxygen-deprived and who was encouraged by doctors to be institutionalized, was diagnosed with autism. While Murray's father and grandfather were ultimately destroyed by their refusal to seek treatment for their disorder and inability to cope with their life's disappointments, Chris shines through his autism -- his family's bombardment of love and refusal to believe the experts led him to become, among other professions, an acclaimed artist... . He channeled his dreams and frustrations through his craft and he now leads a prosperous, successful and independent life."

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Temple Grandin sees her autism as a gift, not a disability.

The professor at Colorado State University, who has become a prominent animal rights activist, spoke at the recent TED Conference in California about how people's brains work in different ways -- and how that's something that should be appreciated, not stigmatized.

Grandin, for instance, thinks in pictures, "like Google for images," she said.

She also grabs hold of details, a brain function she feels could help politicians.

"I get satisfaction out of seeing stuff that makes real change in the real world," she said. "We need a lot more of that and a lot less abstract stuff."

One of her biggest real-world accomplishments, she said, was when a mother recently told her that her autistic child had gone to college because of Grandin's inspiration.

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New research is providing more insight into a gene linked to autism in humans: When the gene is turned off in mice, they have trouble learning and become obsessive.

Researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas report that a drug reduces the obsessiveness in the mice, raising hopes that it might do the same thing in people, although that's not yet proven.

"Clinically, this study highlights the possibility that some autism-related behaviors can be reversed through drugs targeting specific brain function abnormalities," said study senior author Dr. Craig Powell, an assistant professor of neurology, said in a university news release. "Understanding one abnormality that can lead to increased, repetitive motor behavior is not only important for autism, but also potentially for obsessive-compulsive disorder, compulsive hair-pulling and other disorders of excessive activity."

The researchers studied a protein called neuroligin-1, which helps nerve cells better communicate with each other. The mice who had a disabled form of the gene were normal in some ways but obsessively groomed themselves and took longer to learn a maze than other mice.

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