Friday, June 24, 2011

Study of Autistic Toddlers May Lead to Early Detection

Researchers studying autistic toddlers have discovered their brain activity appears to be out of sync at a very early stage -- a finding that sheds light on the biology of the condition and might help in earlier diagnosis.

In research published in the journal Neuron, scientists in Israel used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to look at the brains of sleeping toddlers and found that certain types of neural activity are disrupted in autistic children, but not in typical children or in others with delayed language development.

"What we looked at is how the activity is synchronized," Ilan Dinstein of Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who led the study, said in a telephone interview.

"And we found that the synchronization was different -- specifically in toddlers with autism and across the hemispheres (of the brain) in areas related to language and communication."

No comments:

Post a Comment