The Autism Spectrum
Identification, Understanding, and Treatment in Global Context
- 1st Edition, Volume tbd - February 1, 2026
- Authors: Matthew K. Belmonte, Evdokia ANAGNOSTOU
- Language: English
- Hardback ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 3 - 2 3 8 4 6 - 8
- eBook ISBN:9 7 8 - 0 - 4 4 3 - 2 3 8 4 7 - 5
This volume summarizes the basic and clinical sciences of autism with an understanding of how research and clinical treatment is affected by recent shifts of focus: from di… Read more
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This volume summarizes the basic and clinical sciences of autism with an understanding of how research and clinical treatment is affected by recent shifts of focus: from diagnostic categories to symptomatic dimensions, from provider-centered to patient-centered treatment approaches, from high-resource, individualistic country insights to those contributed from global cultures.
This volume discusses the field’s current state, whence it has come, where it is going, and how to get there. The volume weds basic and clinical understandings, state-of-the-art multivariate analyses, historical and cross-cultural information and relevance, and a patient-centered focus.
- Coverage includes molecular, neural, and psychodynamic aspects of Autism
- Discusses clinical features, subtypes, and targets for therapy
- Includes screening, assessment, and diagnosis
- Identifies medical and psychoeducational interventions plus skills training
Practicing neurologists. Psychiatrists and psychologists treating autism. Researchers in neurology
1. Introduction and Overview
Analysis, across the lifespan, and across the globe
2. History, ideology, and the therapeutic alliance
Autism in the first person
Autism in the family
Action for Autism
Social history of autism: Kanner to Bettelheim and Rimland to Silberman
Scientific history of autism: from social cognition to perception, and loci to networks
3. Etiologies: molecular, neural, psychodynamic
Making sense of genetic heterogeneity
Genes, networks, and targeted treatments
Gut microflora and systemic inflammation
Developmental neuro-immune signalling
Environmental factors
Early developmental markers: neurophysiology and behaviour
4. Clinical features, subtypes, and targets for therapy
Cognitive and affective control
Motor control
Sensory perceptual control
Language
Social and other rewards
Fractionating autism: subtypes, profiles, and markers
Brain dynamics from physiology to information transfer
Epilepsy
5. Screening, assessment, and diagnosis
Global epidemiology
Quantitative diagnosis for all levels of resources
Diagnosis in pragmatic context
Neuropsychiatric comorbidities and gender effects
Identifying and assessing autism in the community
6. Interventions and therapies
Behavioural treatments: evidence, mechanisms, and individual targeting
Medications: means, ends, and prospects
Integrating medical and psychoeducational interventions
Addressing prerequisite skills
Augmentative and alternative communication
Educational and assistive technologies
Sleep therapies
7. Autism across the lifespan
Access to care and early mortality
Access to housing and the workplace
Ageing: neurodegenerative and other comorbiditie
Analysis, across the lifespan, and across the globe
2. History, ideology, and the therapeutic alliance
Autism in the first person
Autism in the family
Action for Autism
Social history of autism: Kanner to Bettelheim and Rimland to Silberman
Scientific history of autism: from social cognition to perception, and loci to networks
3. Etiologies: molecular, neural, psychodynamic
Making sense of genetic heterogeneity
Genes, networks, and targeted treatments
Gut microflora and systemic inflammation
Developmental neuro-immune signalling
Environmental factors
Early developmental markers: neurophysiology and behaviour
4. Clinical features, subtypes, and targets for therapy
Cognitive and affective control
Motor control
Sensory perceptual control
Language
Social and other rewards
Fractionating autism: subtypes, profiles, and markers
Brain dynamics from physiology to information transfer
Epilepsy
5. Screening, assessment, and diagnosis
Global epidemiology
Quantitative diagnosis for all levels of resources
Diagnosis in pragmatic context
Neuropsychiatric comorbidities and gender effects
Identifying and assessing autism in the community
6. Interventions and therapies
Behavioural treatments: evidence, mechanisms, and individual targeting
Medications: means, ends, and prospects
Integrating medical and psychoeducational interventions
Addressing prerequisite skills
Augmentative and alternative communication
Educational and assistive technologies
Sleep therapies
7. Autism across the lifespan
Access to care and early mortality
Access to housing and the workplace
Ageing: neurodegenerative and other comorbiditie
- Edition: 1
- Volume: tbd
- Published: February 1, 2026
- Language: English
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Matthew K. Belmonte
Matthew Belmonte is a research scientist with the Com DEALL Trust, Bangalore, reader in psychology at Nottingham Trent University, UK, and brother and uncle to two people with autism. His research in India, England, and the United States has asked what makes the difference between family members with and without autism, and also what underlies their many similarities. Belmonte helped establish the theory of abnormal brain connectivity in autism, has related prerequisite skills such as attentional and sensorimotor control to the emergence of social communication, and currently leads a project applying motor skills training to support development of communicative skills. His broader interests concern how interactions within and between brain networks covary with autistic cognitive traits, psychological distance and level of construal, sex and gender, and culture; and how these individual and cultural differences may point the way to patient-centred therapeutic strategies.
After reading computer science and English literature as an undergraduate at Cornell University and postgraduate study in neuroscience at the University of California San Diego, Belmonte completed an MFA in fiction at Sarah Lawrence College, a PhD in behavioural neuroscience at Boston University, and postdoctoral study at the University of Cambridge. He has served as adjunct lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, assistant professor at Cornell University, and visiting professor at the National Brain Research Centre (India), as well as on the editorial board of Autism Research and currently on the editorial board of Molecular Autism. He is a founding member of the International Society for Autism Research.
Affiliations and expertise
NTU Psychology, Nottingham, NG, UKEA
Evdokia ANAGNOSTOU
Evdokia Anagnostou is a child neurologist, Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Toronto and senior Clinician Scientist at the Bloorview Research Institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto. She holds a Canada Research Chair in translational therapeutics in ASD and the Dr Stewart D Sims Chair in autism, and is elected to the board of the International Society for Autism Research. Dr Anagnostou has published widely. Her broad and integrative areas of research include neuroimaging, genetics, clinical trials, and studies of lived experience across neurodevelopmental conditions.
Dr Anagnostou trained in neurology/child neurology at McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada and then completed a research fellowship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where she remained for her first academic appointment and served as clinical director of Seaver Research Centre. She then moved to the University of Toronto / Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital where she is co-director of the Autism Research Center and Assistant Director of the Bloorview Research Institute, in addition to seeing patients with developmental differences and complex needs. Dr Anagnostou is an associate editor of Molecular Autism and Autism Research
Affiliations and expertise
Autism Research Centre, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, Toronto, Canada