Neurologists and child development specialists have learned quite a lot about autism and its possible causes in recent years, but much remains poorly understood. It is usually diagnosed “late” – around the age of three or four, and the tests are still subjective.
Now Weizmann Institute of Science researchers, along with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California, San Diego, have found a method that can identify a biological sign of autism in young toddlers that could lead to early diagnosis. The research recently appeared in Neuron.
By scanning the brain activity of sleeping children, the scientists discovered that autistic brains exhibited significantly weaker synchronization between areas tied to language and communication, compared to that of non-autistic children.
“Identifying biological signs of autism has been a major goal for many scientists around the world, both because these may allow early diagnosis, and because they can provide important clues about the causes and development of the disorder,” says post-doctoral fellow Dr. Ilan Dinstein, working with Prof. Rafael Malach, who headed this study at the Rehovot institute’s neurobiology department. While many scientists believe that faulty lines of communication between different parts of the brain are involved in autism disorders, there was no way to observe this in very young children, who are unable to lie still inside a functional MRI scanner while they are awake.
Read more: http://www.jpost.com/Health/Article.aspx?id=233686
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