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Brain Scan Can Detect Autism In Infants
kkleiner writes "A new study shows that brain scans can detect autism in children as young as 6 months old. Researchers at University of North Carolina's Institute for Developmental Disabilities imaged the brains of 92 children who were at high risk for autism. Scans were performed when the children were 6 months, 1-year, and 2-years old. At 2 years, the age when children are typically diagnosed, 30 percent of the children were found to have autism. The researchers then compared the brain images of the autistic children with the others. They saw differences in the brain's white matter, the axon-laden pathways that transmit electrical signals to distant parts of the brain. Of the 15 pathways analyzed, 12 were significantly different between autistic and non-autistic children."
The study results do not detect autism (which most people will read as a diagnosis). When looking back over the scans, differences from normal development could be seen starting as early as six months, but this is retrospective after it was diagnosed at the common ages. This study may at least provide some clues on how autism develops even if it doesn't provide a means of diagnosing it earlier.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
1) The original research article is open access so you can take a look for yourself. The differences were statistically significant between the two groups (ASD-positive versus -negative) but there isn't enough data to estimate a sensitivity or specificity for using this as a test. 2) It could be a diagnostic test. In theory that would allow potential treatments to begin before the behavioral aspects of ASD manifest (which is around 2yo correct?)
If I can recall correctly, brain scan does introduces radiation into the brain
Depends on the type. PET scans do have some radiation. The study in question - http://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=668180&RelatedWidgetArticles=true used diffusion tensor imaging which is a variant of MRI, which uses strong magnetic fields and does't produce any radiation. The technique is essentially harmless.