© Fotolia

On 2 April, World Autism Awareness Day takes place with the aim of raising awareness and better informing the general public on the realities of this development disorder. 

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder that appears during childhood and continues into adulthood. It presents as an altered ability to establish social interactions and communicate, and as behavioural problems.

France has about 100 young people under 20 who have Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD). Childhood autism affects about 30,000 of them

Coordinator of the “Autism Research Network”, Catherine Barthélémy, paediatric psychiatrist, emeritus professor of the Tours Faculty of Medicine and former director of the “Autism” team at Inserm Unit 930 (Imaging and Brain), received the 2016 Inserm Honorary Prize for her work.

“(…) Along with my team, I helped to prove that autism is a disorder linked to a very early anomaly in neurodevelopment of the brain. A particular setting of brain decoders of social information alters the baby’s ability to relate to other humans. This has nothing to do with any maternal malfunction“, she explains.

Find the autism information file, developed in collaboration with Professor Catherine Barthélémy.

See the video about Catherine Barthélémy.