Study: Children with autism outscore other children on math tests

A study reports that autistic children outscore non-autistic children on math tests.

Children with autism and average IQs consistently did better on math tests than non-autistic children in the same IQ range, according to a small new study.

The superiority in math skills among children with autism was tied to patterns of activation in a particular area of the brain, an area normally associated with recognizing faces and visual objects.

"There appears to be a unique pattern of brain organization that underlies superior problem-solving abilities in children with autism," study senior author Vinod Menon, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said in a university news release.

The study included 18 children with autism, aged 7 to 12, and a control group of 18 children without autism. All participants showed normal verbal and reading skills on standardized tests, but the children with autism outperformed their peers without autism on standardized math tests.

The researchers also had all of the children work on math problems while their brain activity was measured using MRI. The brain scans of the children with autism revealed an unusual pattern of activity in the ventral temporal occipital cortex, an area of the brain specialized for processing faces and other visual objects.

The study will be published online Aug. 17 in the journal Biological Psychiatry.

"[Previous research] has focused almost exclusively on weaknesses in children with autism," said Menon, a member of the Child Health Research Institute at Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. "Our study supports the idea that the atypical brain development in autism can lead not just to deficits, but also to some remarkable cognitive strengths. We think this can be reassuring to parents."

Menon said children with autism sometimes exhibit exceptional talents or skills. For example, some can instantly recall the day of the week of any calendar date within a particular range of years, and others have outstanding math skills.

"Remembering calendar dates is probably not going to help you with academic and professional success," Menon said. "But being able to solve numerical problems and developing good mathematical skills could make a big difference in the life of a child with autism."

About one in 88 children has some form of autism, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Study: Autistic children with low IQ could predict epilepsy

A recent study shows that autistic children who also have a low IQ are at a greater risk of developing epilepsy.

At first glance, IQ and epilepsy may seem to have no clinical relation whatsoever. Unlike the association between IQ and autism(ASD), which appears to manifest through cognitive, communication, and social impairments, the association between IQ and epilepsy is less evident. But according the results of a recent study, low IQ in children with ASD puts them at increased risk for epilepsy.

Emma W. Viscidi of the Department of Epidemiology of the Division of Biology and Medicine at Brown University in Rhode Island conducted a study comparing the IQs of children with autism to see if it could provide insight into which children were at risk for epilepsy. Using a sample of 5,815 children with ASD, Viscidi found that 12.5% had epilepsy. When she looked at adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17, the rate increased to 26%.

The study revealed that the children with epilepsy had lower IQs than those without and that language impairment, functional regression, and severity of symptoms were all common in those with comorbid ASD and epilepsy. “The association between epilepsy and the majority of these characteristics appears to be driven by the lower IQ of participants with epilepsy,” said Viscidi. In fact, the risk of epilepsy decreased by nearly 50% with every one point increase in IQ.

Interestingly, Viscidi did not find gender differences in epilepsy rates. Aside from IQ, the other strongest predictor of epilepsy was older age, with children over the age of 10 having 2.5-fold increased risk of developing epilepsy. Viscidi is unsure if this is due to the longer duration of ASD, and if the chronicity increases the vulnerability for epilepsy. Or, as has been suggested by other research, the neurological deficits responsible for ASD are also responsible for epilepsy, predisposing ASD children for epilepsy. Regardless of the exact reason for the comorbidity, this research clearly shows that IQ could be an indicator of epilepsy and that clinicians treating children with ASD should be aware of this association early on.

Reference:
Viscidi, E.W., Triche, E.W., Pescosolido, M.F., McLean, R.L., Joseph, R.M., et al. (2013). Clinical characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder and co-occurring epilepsy. PLoS ONE 8(7): e67797. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0067797

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