Dr. Martha Herbert, an assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, will give a presentation from noon to 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 21, in the Harless Auditorium at the Marshall University Medical School.
The presentation, titled The Autism Revolution: From Broken Brain to Chronic Treatable Systemic Condition, is co-sponsored by the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University and the Marshall University School of Medicine, department of pediatrics.
It is open to the public and admission is free, but anyone wanting to attend must register at http://www.marshall.edu/atc/content/marthaherbertregistration.php.
Herbert also is a pediatric neurologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and an affiliate of the Harvard-MIT-MGH Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, where she is director of the TRANSCEND Research Program (Treatment Research and Neuroscience Evaluation of Neurodevelopmental Disorders).
“Dr. Herbert is one of the world’s leading medical scientists in the field of autism,” said Dr. Barbara Becker-Cottrill, executive director of the West Virginia Autism Training Center at MU. “She is moving the field beyond the conventional view that autism is a hard-wired impairment that cannot be fixed to a view that looks at autism as a whole body condition that is a collection of problems that can improve with proper treatment.
“Medical professionals, therapists, educators, families of children with autism spectrum disorders and the community at large will gain greater insight into what Dr. Herbert calls a revolution in how we think, and what we do about autism.”
Herbert earned her medical degree at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. Prior to her medical training she obtained a doctoral degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz, studying evolution and development of learning processes in biology and culture in the History of Consciousness program, and then did postdoctoral work in the philosophy and history of science.
She trained in pediatrics at Cornell University Medical Center and in neurology and child neurology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, where she has remained.
Herbert’s new book, The Autism Revolution: Whole Body Strategies for Making Life All it Can Be, will be for sale at the presentation.
For more information, contact Becker-Cottrill at 304-696-2332 or 304-544-3085.
